#be the change you want to see in the world etc etc

[spacegyaru]

it's almost 3 am in my country, but i have a fanfic idea for kaiser... i need to let it out;;

cw: michael kaiser x afab! reader | pure fluff / mentions of kaiser's past experiences with his dad. nothing suggestive.

imagine michael kaiser falling in love with you, the owner's daughter of that one bakery that lived across their street. that same girl who gave him free bread everyday, and that same girl who would cry whenever he was wounded and bruised.

your family isn't the richest— but you owned the best bakery in the slums area. because of that, you were often a target of bullies. they bullied you because you have everything that most slum kids didn't have. you had loving parents, you were well-fed, and your parents have stable and honest income from the family business. you were also very pretty, so a lot of people made fun of you, thinking that you are a 'spoiled ditzy princess'.

until one day, you go out for a while to play with others. there, you met him— michael kaiser. he was all bruised and wounded. and to be honest, it looked like he was going to die... if you did not help him that day.

few minutes later, you gave him some water to drink and some sourdough bread to eat and take home. that's all your family's bakery sells after all. your mother also treated his wounds.

he introduced himself as 'michael kaiser' to you and your family. to your parents, he seemed to be a nice and a timid child. but to you, he was cold and a bit hesitant to play and to be friends with you. it was almost as if he hated you.

well, that's what you thought— until there were bunch of kids coming at you, wanting to bully you, pull your hair, and just flat-out mess with you. kaiser was the one who protected you. he told them that he won't hesitate to beat the shit out of them if they mess with you.

apparently, most slum kids are scared of kaiser, which means that you were sooo protected.

and ever since then, you would give him sourdough bread... and if your store is feeling fancy, you would give him some bread rolls that your mother made.

even if kaiser protected you a lot, he was still cold towards you. you thought that he wasn't just expressive.

the truth is, kaiser actually really really liked you. but he didn't have the confidence because he sees you as an angel, and he's just... well, he's just who he is.

fast forward when both of you grew up— well, both of you were in high school when the incident happened. by incident i mean, when he was arrested for alleged stealing.

during that time, both of you were still friends. but you rarely see him because of the 'sidelines' that kept him busy. still, you try your best to keep in touch. sometimes, you would pass by their home and give him something like sourdough bread and some bread rolls.

as time went by, you grew feelings for him. you no longer see him as the friend who protected you, but he was like a knight and shining armor. sometimes, you still wonder why he hasn't let you meet his new friends tho...

one day, kaiser got arrested for stealing. your family was deeply sad about it. they knew that his father forced him to do it— and that he's not the type to do something like that.

after that, you've never heard from him again. until a year later, you've started seeing him on billboards, commercials, and etc. it seems that he's playing for a team in germany.

despite all that happened and the separation between the both of you, you felt very happy for him. whatever success he was experiencing at this point, he deserved it. you were sad that he forgot about you, but eventually, you've come to accept that both of you live in two different worlds now.

until one day, you saw a familiar figure appearing on the bakery door. his usually grumpy expression was changed into a smug and confident one.

your eyes delighted to see who it was — it was michael kaiser, your knight and shining armor, who seem to have returned to see you again. he came back for you.

note: should i make a part two of this?lol

btw this isn't proofread so i apologize in advance!

[l-in-the-light]

"I'm sure he's got nothing to do with me!" says Luffy and I was waiting for him to say it. For him to hear all of this Nika lore and declare that, nope, I don't care, I'm not Nika, I'm not a liberator. It's just such a Luffy thing to do. But I know many fans actually will be shocked with Luffy's answer here or will just dismiss it. I have seen many opinions before that Luffy was always a liberator by choice, so becoming Nika is just natural course of events for him and he will have no problem embracing his role in the bigger scheme of things. Some even complained they hate that Luffy is Nika because they don't want Luffy to be the "fated hero" but instead a "from nobody to the king of the world" trope. But nope! Luffy just noped all of this himself.

Luffy is not a liberator and he's not an altruistic hero, he doesn't go from island to island aiming to save people, and if you think he wanted to, then please remember Fishmen Island and how unhappy he was with the idea of being a hero:

And now if you think Luffy changed since then because Dressrosa happened, then please remember what he asked of Momonosuke in Wano:

Yep, that's right. Luffy still *doesn't have any interest* in becoming a hero. If you think he's alright with that and changed his mind, then you're just not paying attention to him, sorry to say that. Luffy has been pretty consistent about this too and now he declared it yet again in Elbaf. It's the third time already.

You just think it's not a big deal because he so easily changed his mind in Fishmen Island, but it happened only because he had an actual reason to do that. Jimbei promised Luffy all the meat he wants. He gave him a *personal reason* to act like a hero, which is why Luffy agreed. And he did the same in Dressrosa. He wouldn't liberate that country if he didn't get attached first to Law and Rebecca (yes, in this order), and his crew to tontattas. They always do it for someone particular, for their friends. It's the same in Wano too, Luffy's constant motivation is Tama, Momo and Kinemon. He wants them to be happy, most of all, and he even says as much when he defeats Kaido: "I want a world where all of my friends can eat as much as they like".

There, he doesn't do it altruistically because he hates oppresion and villains who thrive on pain of common people and he can't stand seeing it. Yes, he probably thinks it's unfair, but he also grew up in Goa Kingdom, the very definition of unfair regime. He saves oppressed people only when they are his friends or has some other personal interest involved. He defeats the Marine base in Shells Town for Koby (and Zoro, later). He defeats Don Krieg so he can repay his food debt to Baratie. He defeats Arlong for Nami. He fights Wapol for Chopper (who saved Nami) and who he already considers his friend because of that. He fights for the Giants (Little Garden) and Vivi (Alabasta), Conis (Skypiea), Robin (Water 7 and Enies Lobby), Brook (Thriller Bark), Hachi (Sabaody) etc. Though, he does make friends rather easily, so usually it's not that big of a deal. But he isn't going out of his way to places he reads about in the newspapers that need to be liberated, he instead cares more for his own dream. He doesn't enter a certain island with the idea in mind that goes like "if I see some injustice here, I'm gonna bring this shit down". It's the other way around. He makes friends and realizes they're unhappy.

He wants them to be happy again and to live without regrets, and that's why he brings the shit down, whatever it is that makes people he cares about feel so unhappy. Because he thinks this is at least something he can do for his friends. Luffy doesn't think he can do a lot of things, he can't do much at all, but he can do one thing: beat up a guy when needed.

He knows how regret feels like ever since he believed Sabo died, he's not gonna sit there and do nothing next time something like this happens. That's why it's so important for him, to make sure his friends are happy. And that's why he beats up people and liberates countries. It's not for justice, he simply wants his friends to be happy.

But wait a moment, Luffy also wants freedom. Yes, he does. He wants to be the King of the Pirates, because for him it means to be free. And that's how he actually speaks about Nika as well:

He wants the freedom for himself. Isn't it funny that he thinks he already achieved it though?

And before you're disgusted by how selfish Luffy actually is, hear me out: Luffy is simply not a martyr. He won't die or sacrfice himself for the world to liberate it. He will instead die for the world if he thinks that will make his friends happy. Preferably though, he would want to survive and eat that meat with them, and be happy together.

Still, if you want him to be a liberator of a whole world it is actually possible, you just need to make it personal for Luffy, like I suggested. For example, put a person or multpile people who want to save/destroy the world (whichever option you fancy) on Luffy's crew. Luffy always cares for dreams of his crewmates and will always support them (because fullfilling their dreams will make them happy), so he would become a liberator if that helps them. But he would do it for them, not for the world.

Luffy is not a hero because he has a golden heart and a strong sense of justice. He's a hero when his friends are in danger instead, because instead of a golden heart, he simply has a big heart and makes friends wherever he goes. A martyr-like hero who sacrfices himself for people without caring for his own wellbeing is noble, but it's also not a healthy mentality, believe it or not. For starters, if you never care enough for yourself and are ready to throw your life away for a concept, what will happen with people who love you and care for you? Is it fair towards them to throw your life away without caring who you're leaving behind and how they will feel about it? Do you even care then for their feelings if your pursuit of greater good is more important to you? You can save the world and make people you love sad and unhappy, and like they don't even care anymore to live, because you were the one who made them happy and now you're gone. Did you save the world for them or destroyed it for them instead, as the result?

Luffy has his own interest in saving his friends too: so he's not alone again. Humans aren't selfless beings, but it doesn't automatically make us bad people either. And sometimes, while pursuing selfish things, we do something that appear to be extremely selfless. But at the bottom of it: we also do it for themselves, even if it kills us.

Tokyo Babylon taught me that every act is selfish, even if it appears like we do it for someone else: we simply want to feel better about ourselves then. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as we don't lose the sight of other people's feelings on our way. We can always share, after all, and that sharing is the bridge between the lone islands that people are.

Luffy, if he dies, will also say, just like Seishiro: "I didn't do it for you. I did everything by my own choice". For myself. Despite the fact it is also true he does it to make his friends happy. Being selfish and being selfless is like two sides of the same coin and both choices can end up actually hurting people. In the first case, because you care too much about yourself and too little about feelings of others, and in second case because you care too little about yourself and still too little about feelings of people that love and care for you. Can you spot the thing in common here?

[utilitycaster]

Here’s my C3 hot take: I think Matt just messed up. I think att just didn’t do a good job DMing this one, and I’m sad but I don’t think the players could have solved the problems entirely on their own. The lack of a session zero makes no sense, but more to the point I think Matt just has to much Catholic Trauma tm to have told this story. His blind spot to religion v. Personal worship in his world building is to big to stick this one. His excitement about the culmination of these narratives after 9 years made him play story beats to close to his chest looking to surprise and shock his players, and also, because he was so tied to it, he didn’t pivot, or change the story to guide the players through. The pacing, especially at the beginning feels like he was entirely to excited to get to the clever plot.

Honestly… and this makes me sad, a lot of the issues feel like he sort of started believing his own mythology. I am so happy for him to be self confident but this all feels like a story guided by someone who thinks their terribly clever and so don’t have to rely on the same level of hard work, collaboration, prep, planning etc. of previous works (and also wanted to be novel, I just think of their original campaign announcement where they said “anything might happen” and sigh a little).

My bit of hope? That’s a really easy thing to come back from! I hope they reflect and improve going forward!

p.s. this isn’t to say the others couldn’t have made things BETTER, they could have, for sure.

Hi anon,

I disagree with most of this. Most crucially, this is not the form of campaign I think would come of Catholic religious trauma. Matt's mentioned he was raised nominally Catholic but he's also mentioned his parents were artists, hippies, and D&D players, and he seems to be on pretty good terms with them. I think this is a vast overstep on your part that came from basically nowhere, especially since the logical outcome of a Catholic Trauma campaign would in fact be one that actually did portray Vasselheim as a vast controlling force within the world regulating the worship of the gods across it. A pretty massive hole in the worldbuilding, at least as this campaign demands we see it, is that we really haven't seen religion as an oppressive force except in one highly specific case, and even that was spearheaded by mortals and not the gods and is indistinguishable from a purely political land grab. Like, the blind spot you mention is actually a sign that he was not raised particularly religious; someone who was raised strictly Catholic would be extremely aware of religion as a highly organized hierarchy with clear rules and a vast worldwide network and not "a few missionaries who didn't kill anyone or even forcibly convert anyone, Vasselheim seen as a good meeting spot for a worldwide conference, and Ludinus's grievances are all highly personal." Like, the Catholic Trauma version of Exandria has Vasselheim at war with the Empire for their banning of half of the prime deities, or going full Inquisition/Crusade on Hearthdell.

I want to be clear: when I accuse fans of projecting religious trauma it's because they outright have said shit like "I always like when a narrative kills the gods bc I'm a white southerner who was raised Christian". I do not say it just because they are affiliated with a specific religious denomination.

I also don't think the issue is so much believing his own mythology as much as the one major correct thing you said, which is the lack of not just a session zero but a heavy hand in character development, coupled with a very specific plot he wanted for this campaign. Campaign 1 worked because he tailored a campaign heavily to the interests and stories of the characters, and built a world around them. Campaign 2 similarly allowed for that same give-and-take; characters like Trent and Uk'otoa and Marion and the Gentleman came from the backstories the players came up with. Some of the players' ideas were changed as part of that heavier hand in character creation. The guidance for that campaign (morally gray and complex) was actually accurate, and when the characters took a sharp turn away from the planned story, Matt was able to pivot quite gracefully.

The problem really is that it's clear Matt had a very developed vision of this campaign and didn't realize that the characters of Bells Hells largely failed to fit within it. I don't think hard work wasn't done (I think there was in fact a TON of prep that we haven't seen, eg, I 100% believe Matt has an extensive amount of work done on Otohan, Ozo Cruth, Marquet, the Apex War, etc that Bells Hells simply did not see); I think, in fact, that like three hours of work that probably would have resulted in scrapping or drastically changing the characters to fit the intended story would have fixed the vast majority of problems here. It is only, frankly, because the characters are such a bad fit that the issues we're talking about (little establishment of organized religion vs. personal practice) even became issues! But it's literally that - it's not realizing that even a longform campaign can live or die on character creation. It might even be that too much prep was done ahead of time and he was too unwilling to abandon it.

[batboyblog]

I just wanted to thank you so much for all of your reporting on Biden. When I first voted for him, I was mostly voting against Trump, but over time he really won me over by delivering so much more than I could have imagined. I just read your post thanking him and it's making me tear up. He was the best, most progressive president we've had and I'm so heartbroken to see him go. Even if we win again one day and manage to get another president who delivers this much, I still think I'll always be a Biden Democrat at heart. He came from humble beginnings and dedicated his entire life to this country--a country who needed him but didn't want him or appreciate him. He did what he could for people whose identities he doesn't share, and he did it simply because he wanted to and it was the right thing to do. He did it even though they hated him. It makes me think of all the normal every day people who do their best to make the world better in whatever way they can and who get no recognition for it. Your posts would give me hope and they didn't mean "very little" to me. Thank you for doing your part. I'm wishing you strength and hope. 🤎

My grandfather and I talked politics all the time, he'd catch my eye across the room and wave me over and he and I would talk. I'm really glad he's not around to see this because he'd hate it, but I'd give just about anything to talk to him about it.

The last time I saw him in person and we talked shortly before he died in late 2019 he told me "It has to be Biden, he's the only one" and I didn't believe him, I didn't see it. I thought Harris, or maybe Gillibrand. The old man always saw more clearly than I did.

I was a lot like you, not being Trump was good enough, I didn't have high expectations, but to be clear not being Trump was enough and should have ALWAYS been more than enough.

Particularly after January 6th being the guy who saved us from Fascism, a coup, and oh yeah being a basically good person after the worst living American was President were all amazing! great!

But like you said he didn't stop at just putting everything back, he moved. Here was this old white guy, but really believed in diversity, in an idea of America I could be proud of, of not just paying lip service to diversity but really lifting up voices that don't get heard. A guy who reached the top but wasn't jealous and lifted up voices, Harris, Buttigieg, Deb Haaland, etc and let them be stars in their own right.

and the agenda, I'd basically given up that we'd really fight climate change, and yeah it was the 11th hour but he came in fighting like it was the 11th hour, like we really were gonna go to the moon. And high speed rail? and and and etc

There's a line in the Speech Hillary Clinton gave when she had to end her 2008 campaign for President, "And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on." And I think that sums up Joe Biden.

A working class boy from the wrong side of the tracks in Scranton Pennsylvania with a stutter was never ever supposed to run for office. A kid from a state school who was too young to even be sworn into the Senate on Election Day was never supposed to win a Senate seat on his first try. And no one could have blamed him if after his wife and youngest child died leaving him a single dad of two little boy's in a hospital he'd given up on politics and stepped away. But he didn't he was sworn in in the hospital with his kids. He took the train every day to be back home with them at night.

Time and time again life tried to knock Joe down, but it never ever knocked him out.

I think the lesson is to really LOOK! at our leaders, really see them. There's so much cynicism that all politicians are rotten, that you shouldn't "idealize" them or whatever. I'm not saying to, but I'm saying see them for who they really are, who's a basically decent person working hard to make people's lives better, and understand the difference between that and something like Trump.

And its not up to them to save us, or... its that old joke? about the flood and the man who thinks God will save him? we got to pitch in to help save ourselves, great leaders are great but if a whole propaganda system tells everyone they suck they're not gonna be able to do much, we got to do the counter messaging, we got to talk to the real people in our lives and fight back and on-line and we have to go help us be cringe and give a shit and be earnest

[theanxiousghostartist]

Don't thank Trump for TikTok!

Summary of current events: In the US, a TikTok ban was passed in the interest of "national security" and upheld by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS), set to take effect on January 19th, 2025. The app put out a message originally saying that, unfortunately, TikTok was banned in the US and thus had to cease operations there, but later changed it to saying that they were working with Trump to get it back up and running. A few hours later, TikTok started working again in the US, with a message from the app thanking Trump for getting the app running again.

Before you go thanking Trump for getting TikTok back, there are a few things you need to know:

1). Trump was the one to originally pursue a TikTok ban.

In 2020, Trump attempted to ban TikTok and WeChat (a messaging app) through an executive order (which basically acts as a law created by the President). SCOTUS ended up blocking the order, and thus, TikTok stayed in the US.

Source

2). TikTok may still not be available on appstores

Unless the law banning TikTok is repealed, companies like Apple and Google may not offer TikTok in their appstores. The law fines companies that make TikTok available, and thus, those companies may face large fines if they offered it. TikTok is currently not available on Google Play (see screenshot below), and it is only available for those who have downloaded it already.

Source

3). TikTok will probably not be the same

3a). TikTok and Trump

On his platform "Truth" Social, Trump announced his plans to get TikTok back up as,

I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.

I want you to notice that "make a deal" part. Trump has already acknowledged that he wants to own half (50%) of TikTok. Elon Musk (who now owns Twitter and has renamed it X) has already expressed his interest in owning social media platforms, as we say with his purchase and rebranding of Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg (owner of Meta) has been increasingly competitive with TikTok, which has caused him to launch reels on Facebook and Instagram as direct competition with TikTok. The most likely scenario to reenstates TikTok in the US is the purchase of TikTok by someone in the US. No matter who purchases the platform (these being some of the richest men in the world), the app will never be the same. It will lean to right-wing politics and push the narrative of a conservative America. Zuckerberg has already begun to tailor Meta platforms to fit the conservative narrative, allowing women to be called "household objects" and queer people to be called "mentally ill." Elon Musk funded the majority of Trump's campaign and is notably transphobic. Donald Trump is messiah for conservatives currently and is on a scarily similar path to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Even if TikTok stays, it most likely won't be a safe place for queer people, people of color, trans people, and women.

Source Source

3b). TikTok and Project 2025

Project 2025 is the plan for the Trump campaign, and it is scary. It plans to roll back queer/trans rights, limit abortion access, roll back voting rights, limit/roll back women's rights, significantly increase deportations, roll back the rights/protections for people of color, ban books, abuse the power of the government to spy on civilians, target journalists and protesters (violating their 1st admendment rights), censor classroom discussions of race, gender, sexuality, etc. and more. If Trump/someone close to him gets ahold of TikTok (which is looking more and more likely), TikTok will reflect that (at least, in the US). This means that LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and women will be censored and silenced on the platform in favor of Nazis. Furthermore, the government could use TikTok to see who is in favor of LGBTQIA+/POC/women's/disabled rights and place them on watchlists. Hypothetically, let's say your queer and vocally support queer rights on TikTok (posting TikToks about being queer, liking/watching/saving/sharing TikToks about queer rights, etc.) and you were placed on a watchlist. Let's say you go to a protest for queer rights and end up getting arrested. The police end up linking you to your TikTok profile, and suddenly, you are facing extra/harsher charges than you were already. Basically, it's possible that TikTok could become more like Orwell's 1984 (Big Brother is watching), then we realize.

Source Source

4). Donald Trump is a terrible person, and this stunt played with people's lives

Donald Trump is a bad person. He is a rapist. He is homophobic, transphobic, racist, ablelist, xenophobic, and misogynistic. Hr is a Nazi. He is also a convicted felon (which doesn't necessarily make him a bad person. However, the reasons for his conviction/charges and his clear guilt do). He has been accused of election interference on several occasions (notably in 2016 and 2020), and according to Jack Smith's final report on his investigations into Trump, if Trump had not been elected president, he would have been charged with election interference (for the election of 2020), including charges related to his stolen documents from after his first term, his obstruction of the Department of Justice's (DOJ) investigation into him/January 6th, and Trump's involvement in January 6th.

Bad people can do good things. While this is true, in this case, it doesn't fit. This stunt with TikTok not only sent millions of Americans in emotional distress but also played with the lives of content creators and small businesses that rely on TikTok for their income. Not only could these creators/small businesses in the US not get paid for the time the app was down, but they had to get their audience over to other platform so that they still had income and clear out/move products from TikTok, creating much more monetary loss than gain. Furthermore, content creators and small businesses in other countries risk losing portions of their audience from this ban, resulting in a loss of income durectly relating to the ban.

Source

TL; DR - Trump originally wanted to ban TikTok, TikTok isn't fully "saved" (not available on appstores), TikTok will most likely be censored/used to push conservative/basically Nazi propaganda, this stunt hurt a bunch of content creators/small businesses

[a-student-out-of-time]

More Real Talk

Hey everyone. Mod Bubbles here.

I'm not gonna beat around the bush here: you all know what's going on, you've all heard about it, you don't need me to tell you about it. You've heard about it and you're gonna hear about it a lot these next four years.

I don't want to talk about that. Instead, I wanna address something else that, on a personal level, I believe is a lot more serious but a lot easier to grapple with.

You wanna know what I believe is the biggest problem we're dealing with these days? You can point to a lot of things, but at the core, they all have the same root to them.

Hopelessness.

Yeah, a DR blog talking about hope, how crazy is that?

But in all seriousness, it's at the core of every argument, every political discussion, every post I see made about not just the near future, but the long term as well. It's always the same points about neo-fascism, climate change, wars, cyberpunk dystopias, and global extinction. Very few people today seem to have any faith that the world can be better.

And I can't say I blame them. I was there too once, when I was a teenager. I lived in constant fear of the future, worried about what it means for me, and I'd get trapped in doomscrolling cycles. I'd lay awake at night and cry my eyes out. Yet I'm still here, on the cusp of turning 30, and I'm at a better point in my life than I've ever been.

Fear and desperation are ultimately useful, but they can be self-destructive. They can prevent you from seeing the truth and make you ironically vulnerable to the ones you should be most afraid of.

Why do people join cults or militias or vote for bad politicians? Are they all just stupid or evil? Sure, some may be, but most are just desperate, afraid and don't understand how the world really works. They need a helping hand with deprogramming what they were told.

Here's the facts:

We've already beaten climate change's worst predictions and the changes we've made can be reversed.

Plastic pollution in the oceans is being cleaned up.

Conservation success stories just keep coming.

More people are living better lives nowadays, with lower rates of child morality, starvation, crime, preventable diseases, even bullying rates have declined.

The Green Energy Revolution is here and nothing is going to stop it.

New advancements in materials science are on the way and will revolutionize everything from construction to manufacturing to space exploration.

I say all this because the ultimate source of hope is knowledge. Yes, you can open yourself up to a lot of dark avenues when you start learning about the world, but you'll also learn how much good there is out there being done.

This isn't a distraction, it's how I help people understand that the world can always be better and that just one person being in power will not change that.

Now, I know what you may say to that. I've seen posts about how the internet is going to be censored, that propaganda spread everywhere, that there'll be concentration camps, the constitution will be ripped up, etc.

And to that, I have to be honest: I've already heard it all before.

The things you're worried about today? I was worried about them in 2009 during the Great Recession. People worried about them in 2005 when Bush was re-elected, and the concerns there also included terrorism. Do we even still talk about Al-Qaeda? Not really!

And misinformation in this age has always been a problem, especially on the big sites. These are old problems brought to the forefront, and it's always been important to learn the skills to spot them.

More importantly, all this assumes the administration would actually be able to implement any of their promises. Every administration does that and few of the truly big ones about change have happened, especially because said promises ran counter to reality within the system.

I'm not trying to downplay any concerns about the situation, I promise. It's okay to be sad, scared, and concerned about peoples' safety. It's okay to cry if you need to. What you should not do is give up just because of all this.

I'm going to sound very harsh for a moment, but I need to say it: by being doomerist and defeatist, you're part of the problem. You not only stop helping, you run the risk of discouraging other people from trying because you believe it's pointless. When you succumb to pessimistic nihilism, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy that only rewards those who benefit from your inaction or your death.

Don't do that to people. Don't do that to yourself.

The world gets better when you first believe it can be better. How do you do that?

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but here's some suggestions that I'm sticking to:

Live daily life. Get up, eat, stay hydrated, take your medication, bathe, dress comfortably, listen to music, watch a movie, clean your home, play a game, hang out with friends, just do things that make you happy. As you should always do.

Stop looking at doomer posts. It literally does not help with anything and they are not credible sources of information just because they're cynical.

Do not let go of your ambitions. Always have a dream or a goal in mind, no matter what it is, and always aim for it. It's never stupid, it's never too late, it's something you aspire to and that's really awesome.

Stop looking for enemies. There are more important things to devote your time to than arguing over inane bullshit on the internet. That's been true since the start.

Be kind to people. Let go of whatever anger and resentment you may have for people, try to make new friends, and recognize when you can help someone else in need. Sometimes it's as simple as letting them know you care.

Be kind to yourself. You are not a failure, you're not a burden, you're not a lost cause, you can always improve as long as you're alive.

Remove toxicity from your life. Cut out bad influences and replace them with better things. If you have to leave a toxic environment, you can work on doing so.

Always learn new things. It's really fun to end the day with a new piece of knowledge you didn't have the day before.

Let yourself feel. Are you angry? Sad? Scared? Worried? Let yourself feel it, and then you can move on. Don't bury an emotion or let it stagnate.

Learn to recognize bad faith posts/misinformation. This is a critical skill to possess and one you need to always pass on to others. Not everyone who posts it is evil, sometimes all they need is a simple correction on a matter and the situation will be resolved.

Clown on Evil. Whenever people want you to fear them or take them seriously, you mock them, make memes about them, treat them as a joke and defuse whatever power they try to have.

Be true to yourself. Above all, don't let the next 4 years turn you into something you're not.

I say all this as someone who's been around longer than a lot of people who follow me: your future is not empty. I wished I'd done years ago everything I'm doing now, but I've decided I'd rather do them than spend the rest of my life lamenting and wondering what might've been.

You can spend years convincing yourself there is no future, and then the future arrives and you have no idea what to do anymore.

Change- actual change- starts from below and works its way up. And no matter how much life beats you down, no matter what's on TV or what the future may hold, you can always choose to do something about it.

You can always choose to be kind to yourself and to others. You can always choose to believe. And that's where you can start.

[cotidianoseeder]

If I was you, Americans, I would take advantage that it is just the begging of government and start to save some media, like, fucking now

I am Brazilian, and if I was you, I would start to save in a pen drive or buy physical copies of things considered "leftist". Trump is crazy, a complete megalomaniac, and we already saw the first laws about trans people in the first day, so I will say it again:

Download or buy physical copies of things that can be considered "leftist".

It doesn't matter if it is a punk song, a movie explaining about poc history, your cute lgbt romance, or an informative books and articles in favor of lgbt people. Just download or buy it! It will variate from person to person. Some will prefer to save their favorite songs about revolution, others will prefer to have books about environment, some may like books like the Communism Manifest, others will save their cute gay movie, but just do it.

Things about the environment and climate change, history about poc people, history about women right and feminism, holocaust, books against nazis, about sex education, etc.

If you can do it, do it now. This man is a megalomaniac, and he looks that will do everything to erase us, and other important causes. So please, let's do it. There are so good contents, that you want to read someday, that will comfort you, teach things to you, but if he prohibits it, you and a lot of people who needs will not have. In the worst scenario, books, movies, series, and songs that helped us so much will disappear, may turn lost media to a good part of the population. They want to rewrite history, taking the true out of our hands.

I would also say to you use a VPN, and for folks in the whole world, remembers: USA is like an old brother, everything good or bad that it does, the world usually follows. I pray that it doesn't happy, but also in the worst case, the world will go to the same vibes as the USA.

Sorry if it sounded alarmist, but it is better safe than sorry, and I believe that it might happen. They banned Anne Frank and others books from school in Florida.

Sorry for the English. Repost it and share it, if you can, when more people see it, and save media. When people see it earlier, more media will be saved, and you won't lose things that you liked.

So many books are helping me when I am depressed, and I believe that I am sinning (in my case is open christians books in favor of lgbt people helps me a lot), and they might be banned, as many others books. I want people having a harder time have the songs to listen, the books to read, and the movies to watch, so please, save media.

Again, sorry if it sounded alarmist, but 'better safe than sorry', and this guy looks so crazy. I really don't know if any American started to think that it may happen.

Also, safe articles in favor of lgbt and others minorities!

[skunkes]

for me, the loveliest parts of your drawings are the construction. like veryyy inspired and true to anatomy but very clearly your own flavor. your pdf has really really put that "spark" for me in drawing again 💖 especially since I also draw doodley & small. unfortunately, with my ADHD/current workflow it's a real uphill battle to not give up a study despite desperately wanting to get better at construction. :(

if you use studies a lot, do you have any tips on how to keep studies fun? What sources have worked for you in the past? (especially for fat/wrinkles/clothes)?

This is getting to be a pretty specific ask haha sorry if it's a lot. I hope some of it made sense tho :)

hi hi so idk that i'd endorse it per se but what worked for me was only focusing on stuff i was interested in for years LOL

so in high school i loved drawing hands and arms... so i only ever focused on hands and arms...

i literally did not start fully focusing on/trying to learn Legs (for example) until the last 2 years. you can see even now that idk how to draw shoes (and idk that ill ever learn because ive never cared about em irl and only really use one pair LMFAO but that could change!) and then its slowly come together like puzzle pieces.

All of this came from personal interest....i was fascinated with hands and arms at first, the shapes the forms. then u can combine it with other things. i became determined to draw all sorts of bodies well so i could depict my ocs accurately. i had a focus on noses because i love noses and wanted to have ocs with their own unique noses, so i had an excuse to draw said ocs more to learn. (and then becoming enamored with all the ways skin and flesh can sit and squish helped with wanting to draw bodies more).

stuff like that helps keep it fun. sometimes when i do body studies now i dont draw the heads/faces because its less fun (TO ME) to do that and i know ill end up focusing more on that than the learning of the body.

sometimes i draw the bodies with my ocs heads so i have more fun. when i first started learning legs i only drew disembodied ones.

im not saying to do dis and yes you have to leave your comfort zone to get better sometimes but you have to find what works for YOU... bc if you get too "uncomfortable" then u wont wanna do it at all (see again: i could force myself to draw a page of shoes but i genuinely just dont want to adn i dont care. maybe in a few years ill be obsessed with them. im king of not leaving my comfort zone. i love being comfortable. but i make it work)

however you Learn you can always expand upon it once u have the foundation! like how over the years ive added more little details to some forms (because i like seeing them!)

idk how i learned to get better at drawing fat but i recommend sources like fatphotoref, morpho's book on fat and skin folds, and (18+ recommendation) subreddits for nudes, especially if they're focused on fat people. i like this last one bc you can truly see a range of difference in body proportions and fat distribution etc as well as seeing how other people stylize such things

im going to be real with u and say i SUPER dont know how i learned folds. im actually still learning now that im exploring more fashion in the real world, but even now i kind of just guess from what i know theyre meant to look like. if i REALLY want it to look accurate ill wear a similar garment and use that as a ref and then keep that in my mental library. here's 2 examples i can think of where i really had to take a pic because my imagination wasn't cutting it (and even then the 2nd was exaggerated of course.) this seems like a "leaving the comfort zone" moment but it was truly fueled by curiosity and fascination more than anything, which is good. (but AGAIN. you could not get me to care this much about drawing shoes. so it really depends on You and your interests in order to make it fun.)

otherwise i kinda just guess 😭 this is where i excel at focusing on making something look Good instead of right. i just see what shapes look fun, sculpt them around the body...

morpho also has a clothing + folds book though, so i wld look there ^_^ perhaps try putting a subject you really enjoy into your favorite outfit for practice? stuff like that... that post about how improvement comes from being insanely obsessed with something is real u just gotta find and latch onto whatever that may be

[blazehedgehog]

what was the deal with games media and forums during the 2000s being so harsh and in many cases downright unfair towards games that wanted to experiment or do something interesting? part of me feels that is why the 2010s had so many massive game series pumping out boring and "safe" games.

We were a lot more ignorant back then. You have to figure that games media has a definitive age, right. Now we had video game magazines going ball the way back to the 80's, but it feels like there was a real boom in game magazines in the 90's with things like EGM, Gamepro, Game Players, Game Fan, Nintendo Power, Game Informer, Edge, Next Generation, PC Gamer, CGW, Tips & Tricks, PSM, etc.

But the age of the industry back then... even if a lot of the writers were in their 20's, 30's, and sometimes even 40's, the readers were all pretty young. I started reading gaming magazines when I was 11. And to some degree it felt like the industry grew up with us. It also reflected the wider era as a whole.

We used to be a more innocent people. More ignorant. Unaware of the wider world at large. American white males (the primary demographic for gaming magazines) lived in this tiny little bubble where they got to feel like they were kings. The world was their oyster. Racism? Nah man, civil rights solved that back in the 1950's. Racism is over. We beat the nazis in the 40's, they don't exist anymore either. Women belong in the kitchen making us a sandwich. I'm American, I'm straight, I'm white, I'm a man, and that makes me the center of the known universe. As long as I have beer, boobs, and bacon, my life is perfect.

And the thing about being comfortable is that people like to be comfortable. Comfort usually means cozying up with something you already know you're going to like. A known quantity. So that's this era, right: repeating familiar ideas and milking them for all its worth, completely unchallenged, because nobody is comfortable when they are being challenged.

But widespread, modern internet access began to spread across the world. Smartphones and social media connected us more closely than we ever have before, both for better and worse. And suddenly all those Straight, white, American males are rubbing elbows with very different international cultures than they're used to, and the perspective on American life begins to shift. The veil is lifted. Eyes are opened for the first time. The world is a very different place than what most Americans thought it was.

Racism? Not actually solved. Nazis? They're still out there, actually. Women? Minorities? Equal rights are not as equal as it sounded. Plus, we trample all over other cultures constantly. And bad actors are rapidly trying to muddy the waters so they can continue to operate unopposed. Welcome to the real world.

Some people embraced this new knowledge with open arms. Learning, and growing, and changing, seeing fresh perspectives and new ideas. And other people just wanted to stay comfortable, sticking their heads in the sand, and trying to deny what was now right in front of them.

My point is, as a people, a worldwide planetary entity, we're a lot more diverse now. We're a lot smarter and more accepting of others. We're a lot more mature.

And then there's something I haven't touched on and its the fact that corporations love "comfort", too. They love being able to avoid taking risks and feeding us the exact same content in perpetuity. But with the indie game boom, more people than ever before can put their art out into the world, which just drives diversity even more.

My point being that we used to be pretty dumb and ignorant, but some of us are less dumb and ignorant nowadays.

[cordycepsfem]

Speaking of this:

Here is one of the chief members of the local “queer networking” - “gimme money” - Facebook group, a trans woman who for some reason always needs money. They posted this, got approximately $30, and then got so desperate that they invoked community fears.

Oh, if only 37 people send you $10, huh?

And you get $35-$45, huh? What does it cost to get you there, clothes, makeup, etc.? Do you even break even, bro?

And you want us to let you come into our homes to work with our pets or touch our things - no references given for cleaning or dog walking, btw - are you trustworthy, do you do a good job? - or come see some godawful drag show for money? How is this my problem again, other than being white and gainfully employed (and not a member of the gender fandom)?

What the fuck, dude.

LA is on fire. People are dying around the world from hunger and violence and climate change and a lack of medical treatment. We are, as stated, inaugurating a buffoon surrounded by a cabinet of idiots, whose policies are going to harm so many Americans.

And you want me to “redistribute” my wealth to someone who, by all previous actions, like coming back week after week to beg for more, isn’t all that good at handling it?

This doesn’t get pushback because it’s a sacred trans woman asking for it, just some meek “shares” from the enbies who know their place. She probably threw the first brick at Stonewall or something, better share it or boost it. 🙄

Allyship means that both parties receive benefits. This is a dictatorship. Networking means everyone helps each other grow. This doesn’t help anyone grow, including the original poster.

Being this way has to be exhausting.

Scrolling through Reddit today casually looking at the news of the day when I of course see a Tumblr post that’s been upvoted a bunch talking about how it’s not just okay to be “not transphobic,” one must work at actively being an ally.

And honestly… I just sighed. I no longer give a shit. It’s all so tiring. I do not want to be an ally. I want to be left alone, so that if one wishes to play pronoun games and be called Smurf or Toejam or Aster it/pup/they then it has nothing to do with me. Or when a 6’5” “lesbian” posts engagement photos to his 5’ wife and we’re all supposed to just smile and nod and agree that of course that giant man is a woman… I want it to have nothing to do with me.

And when boys can’t play sports with girls or men can’t use single-sex spaces and women with interesting haircuts and men in programmer socks scream about it, I want to continue not giving a shit.

I no longer want to be an ally, if I ever did before I peaked. They have made it too much work for so little reward. I just want to exist away from all gender bullshit.

[paiigemahoney]

Hen in 8x07

[seefasters]

man its been a week and i still can't believe the one ship that owned my life at the age of 13 became canon because some tumblrinas went insane in neil gaiman's inbox for like 2 years

[platinum-roulette]

My hand slipped

[44-mr-midnight-44]

Whoops, I didn't see that you added a comment to this, I just thought it was the tags!

Ya ya!!! Their relationship gets a lot better as time goes on. :)

There's a really rough patch around the point where Heart moves out as he doesn't tell Mind or Soul and they get really really stressed out. It's following a fight where Heart threatens to leave and one of them [either Mind or Soul, haven't decided which yet} tell him to "{[just do it]}", so over the next week or so Heart starts booking a bunch of appointments and scrounges together money, then silently leaves to a new apartment, staying at hotels for a little while before he can move in.

He does NOT actually ever cut off Mind or Soul but does ghost them, refusing to pick up their calls (as, he knows they will look for him and/or try to stop him), but once he's moved in he finally picks up one of Mind's calls, who's greatly surprised and frenetically (half-furious, half-relief-horrified) starts questioning him on where the cluck he went and why on EARTH would he do that.

Heart explains everything; he got a good job as a barista, has disability benefits, is working with a few non-profits to get on his feet, went to SO many appointments to get a government ID, a social security number, a physical, etc., and was now a legal citizen even despite the fact that there's no evidence he's human or functioning like one.

Mind is greatly surprised, and it just has to sink in that… Heart did it. He actually left, just straight up made up his mind and stood up for himself for once. It's tough for him, and it gets tougher when Soul finds out Heart finally picked up and sobs into the microphone about how he thought he would never hear from again, either from running away or worse, making "(true)" on his threats.

It's a little bit rough for a while. Heart's working relatively long hours and has to have a LOT of meetings with a lot of people for things like food cards and medical assistance, and every now and again gets a phone call from Mind whom is not even HALF as rude as he used to be. It's clear Mind's making a genuine attempt to rekindle, but Heart doesn't know how much he wants it, seeing as how Mind waited until Heart actually had control over his life to apologise.

Mind and Soul are also continuously pushing to find Heart's location, and Heart doesn't know why but he just doesn't trust it. He doesn't think they'll kidnap him or anything (although doesn't believe it to be past them), but he does believe they'll come back in his life and likely either try to take control over it again or be a bigger part of it than he wants them to be right now.

Heart visits during holidays (alongside the rest of Soul's family) and it hurts for Mind and Soul to hear he's doing so well because they think it's "{[obvious]}" that his life is better without them in it, but that's not really the case.

Heart's relationship with them benefitted from some "(time alone)", away from them; as, the amount of power and reign he had over his own existence was lacking and it was undoubtedly painful for him. He needed independence, and to be in-contact with other people than his only two immediate family members, whom were clearly too unstable to have a healthy relationship with in the moment, especially with their dynamic.

One day, Mind manages to get a scholarship; he'd passed a GED for a while now but hadn't left the Mindscape much as he feared change in the world, much more than Heart did. He ended up getting one due to Soul's proof of disability, and since the government counted Soul as the closest thing Mind had to a parent they allowed him to have one which made college plausible; something Mind desperately wanted.

The problem was that dorms were not included; and Mind had no feasible way of getting from point A to point B, and it also did not help that Mind lacked the same "existence legality" that Heart had.

His only hope was staying with Heart.

Heart had bettered himself a lot being independent; he'd learned more about how the real world worked and had been in the process of getting an art therapy degree through online classes, aiming to work with foster homes. He'd become much less spiteful, much less resentful, and allowed Mind to stay with him, letting Mind bunk on the living room couch and making a few short ground rules about staying there.

It was the first time, one of, at least, that Mind had ever experienced Heart having more control over him that he had of Heart.

It kind of helps him have a greater change in perspective, and understand what that feeling of dependency, and desperation, felt like. If Heart didn't want him to stay, it wouldn't be hard to get him to leave; and Mind, being an anomalous logical half of a depressed person's brain, didn't exactly have great legal rights, either, considering he'd still been in the long process of getting them, with much less knowledge on the process that Heart had.

Heart and Mind had started to have the kind of relationship that you'd imagine tense siblings begin to have in adulthood; they had inside jokes, they had banter, they'd have bad movie nights with cheap caramel popcorn from Walmart, they'd spend time with one another's friends as a combined friend group, they'd share each other's makeup and drinks, they'd gossip at unsightly hours… they'd started to become what they started out as, brothers bound by unusual circumstance.

Heart and Mind being gone helped Soul, too; once again, "{time alone}" was very beneficial, and Soul and Whole had begun to "stabilise". In the coming short months Soul would have odd sparks of "double-consciousness" before he and Whole become one-and-the-same; albeit, Soul did retain attributes of his nonhumanity as a side effect. The Mindscape island was closer than ever to Long Island, and Soul had decided to use his land that the government couldn't really stop him from owning (it was quite literally made of his consciousness and he could manipulate it as he pleased) into making a small farm; due to his pleasant childhood memories of working on a farm in his youth.

Eventually, Mind moved out, getting a good apartment in an alright part of town as had gotten a pretty good job and Heart had ended up agreeing with some online friends to split rent and live in a larger apartment together. It kinda just… all worked out in the end.

Heart, Mind, and Soul all had a very positive relationship at this point and made it a mark to spend time together doing something, even if it's just a movie or laser tag, once a month; they regularly call each other, share a lot of Discord servers, and visit from time-to-time. Sometimes they bicker, and banter, but it's fine. It's apart of family.

Mind also got uncle status and Soul got "{grandhost}" status when Heart ended up having kids later on in-life, to add to the sappy fire.

Hope that appeases you, my friend. :) I think of only the SAPPIEST most CORNIEST happy endings for my stories.

All of my stories (that I show to the world consistently) have some sort of "moral" to them, like a good kid's story, and I'd say that this one is that time alone, and time together, can be perfect in the right scenarios and destructive in the wrong ones, and that everyone needs solitary sometimes and every needs company other times. Hope you enjoy!!!

( i feel bad for being so bad at healing )

This piece is very personal to me as I've been going through an extremely tough time and Heart is an extremely personal character to me, so making an art piece about my specific AU of him's rough healing journey really helped despite the VICIOUS "(bad thoughts)" as Heart would call it going through my head.

Because of this, just this once, I want to reiterate that I do not want any Jashshippers, pro-shippers/dark-shippers of any kind, conservatives, TERFs, or anyone who takes pleasure/pride in being a bad, mean person (bragging about doing bad things, loving arguing, boasting about trash-talking, etc.). This art means a lot to me and these types of people are the exact types of people that made me spiral while drawing this (mostly pro-shippers), so please, I request that you leave this alone if you are one of those people. We don't have to fight, just please respect my boundaries.

With all that being said, I would be head over heels if any of you were to gush/over-analyse this art immensely. There's a lot to it.

General context: Lost at Sea is about as close-to-canon as my CCCC AUs get, and it's not close to canon at all. It takes place within a condensed Mindscape-island far off the coast of Long Island (formerly Australia, before Soul broke even more) where Heart and Mind had grown up in-isolation. It is generally inaccessible but there is a bus that can go to and from the island, which is how Heart and Mind had interacted with Soul's family and later on leave the Mindscape island itself. For most of Heart and Mind's life, they had only known each other; initially very close, before Soul's self-loathing had spiralled so far that Heart and Mind broke their oath to attempt to make Soul be "whole" again {unknowingly to Soul, Whole already exists; Whole is Soul when he's asleep, and Soul is Whole when Soul's asleep} and begun to become viciously at war with one another, in an attempt to repair Soul with their own ideals.

Heart had been so tired of never having been listened to by Mind or Soul and being simply rejected for being weaker and technically the cause of Soul's dismay that he had led Mind to a gap in the island's earth to shoot him, having come to the last resort that if he were to ever be understood it would need to be through intense violence. This… backfired, with Heart missing and Mind compromising the hole in-order to imprison Heart at the bottom of it; trapped in a large pool of water with chains forever attempting to pull him under, and Heart had fought for many weeks before giving up; allowing himself to "(die)", believing he could never make it and it was for the greater good.

This failed. Heart did not die and was retrieved several months later. He had developed severe pneumonia from the amount of fluid in his lungs and his muscles were severely atrophied, as he had already had underdeveloped muscles in his unique biology but they were now torn and damaged, meaning Heart could never be physically the same again.

Heart was emotionally damaged almost beyond repair. Mind and Soul believed it had "[{fixed}]" him in a way, albeit Soul was much more empathetic than Mind was; Mind was in-denial over how much it hurt to see his sister gone. Heart responded poorly to the coming months of healing, haunted by unending hours spent convincing himself to not give up only to slowly wear down his will and accept that his life was not worth the effort. The pain, the suffocation, the exhaustion, the hunger, it had all worn on him so much, and following his escape he'd lost over a dozen kilos and found little motivation to do much more than sleep and aimlessly scroll on social media.

All of my stories have some sort of sappy happy ending at the end of them because I just can't help myself, they gotta be happy eventually, and Heart does become happy in this AU eventually (he becomes an art therapist in New York City and lives with a few online friends in a cosy apartment!), but the process to recovery is often times harsh.

(REBLOGS > LIKES I WILL ACTUALLY CRY IF THIS FADES TO OBSCURITY BC IT ONLY GOT LIKES)

[nocticulas]

little ask game💕! send me a random fact of any of your ocs and i will reply with a random fact of any of mine!

[seventh-sojourn]

Happy birthday to the beautiful heavenly princess:

Peter John Sinfield (1947-2024)

The picture is entitled “Considering Ingredients”

“Peter, as some of you will know has two cookery books waiting to follow upon the er, heels of his 2nd solo album "Thread To Heaven" – which will escape sometime in 2008.” [Source: Song Soup on Sea]