#because that's the point

[jyndor]

why are people shocked that h*mas has treated the hostages with respect does anyone understand what the strategic point in taking hostages is? the whole point is to make sure they're okay and well-cared for because otherwise there's no leverage for negotiations. do i think the hostages are actually sooo thankful to the hostages for being so nice to them and their children? i don't know, i mean i wouldn't be surprised either way - hard to be thankful for being taken hostage but i can also imagine feeling pleasantly surprised when you are treated with respect and dignity by h*mas when they take you hostage.

i'm not saying taking hostages is good i cannot believe i have to say that but people will read that and say "ooHOOO so you're saying h*mas is good and kind, you're falling for propaganda!!!" no i am just using my brain. unlike everyone who is against a ceasefire at the bare minimum, because apparently yall are okay with the rest of the hostages being in harm's way.

not to mention the entirety of the palestinian population in the gaza strip are hostages essentially and the palestinian prisoners have NOT been treated with such dignity and respect for their wellbeing. but again, treating the hostages you've taken with respect is the barest of bare minimums.

[laspocelliere]

Day Twelve: Quarry

“You know my dear, one day you’re going to get sick of looking at me like that.”

Golden light dappled off of the Warrior’s hair as she turned, not unlike the way it shone on the lush foliage of the Greatwood. Her eyes were dark, and untrusting, and Emet-Selch spread his gloved hands wide, opening himself up as unthreatening to her where he had appeared beneath where she stood. 

“Precisely,” he added, as though she’d answered him with a look alone. “One day, you’re going to learn that I am not your quarry, hero. And you’ll feel so very guilty over how many of those looks you graced me with.”

Turning properly, elegant hands pressed against tree bark for balance, the lauded Warrior of Darkness looked down at the Ascian, balanced on a rocky outcrop where she’d climbed up for a better viewpoint. The look on his face was unreadable, while not lacking any of the underpinning amusement.

“I rather doubt that,” she said quietly, but she didn’t back down. Emet-Selch, for his part, clapped his hands together once, decisively, a delighted smile breaking across his face and rather changing it entirely. If she hadn’t been looking at the precise correct moment, she’d have missed it.

“She speaks! How utterly charming. What pearls of wisdom have you been withholding behind that stare of yours?”

She shot him a look that had felled far lesser men, and it only made him grin wider. “Bravo, hero.” 

With a flourish, he twirled his wrist and extended his hand out towards her. “However, I do believe your overprotective keepers are starting to get nervous with you out here with me.”

The look she gave his extended hand was even colder than the one she’d given to his face, and he smirked. “Don’t worry, hero. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done so already.”

Light as a butterfly’s wing, her fingertips touched his, just light enough to give the illusion that he was helping her down. “You could try.”

She gave him nothing more than the slender curve of her back as she walked away, but he was laughing to himself anyway. “Now that, my dear, sounds like a delightful challenge.” She was already gone, but his amusement lingered, musing to himself in the shadows of the enormous trees. “One I may be forced to take you up on, one day.”

Beneath his glove, his fingers tingled where she’d touched him.

Good humour melting away almost instantly at the realisation, he put it firmly from his mind. With an irritated snap of his fingers, he was gone.

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

[my-darling-boy]

I was at a bookstore looking through the art section and I saw a spine that said The Camden Town Nudes which was interesting because this didn’t seem like the bookstore where I would ever find something like that and I wanted to have a casual look but like. This also wasn’t exactly the bookstore where you felt like you could look at naked pictures let alone just suggestive paintings of them, it’s a really small shop as well, so I was like right I’ll just take a quick peek, I’m an art student, I love history, maybe I’ll buy it. I looked both ways and saw the shopkeep had left momentarily and no one was about, so I opened it and found it was an entire book featuring nude Edwardian women all painted by Walter Sickert between 1905-1912 and it was actually quite a revolutionary set of paintings for its time given that it featured very raw depictions of working class nude women in dark London instead of the elegant, white bedsheet clad, Demure middle and upper class women usually depicted.

And of course RIGHT as I flip to this lady’s boobs practically taking up an entire double page spread, every customer in a 5 mile radius appeared from around the corners of the shelf including the shopkeep and immediately regressing to a wet, pathetic Edwardian man from 1908, startled, I dropped the large book which caused a giant SLAP on the floor in this already silent store thus causing all patrons to look down at me scrambling on my knees to close a giant book of Edwardian boobs and let me tell you it would not have been nearly as funny had I not immediately felt like some Edwardian local pervert who just tried to sneak a cheeky peek at the erotic book in the bookstore only to drop it dramatically causing a scene, red up to his ears trying to shove it back on the shelf. Like such a casual and normal thing in modern day but looking at Edwardian women suddenly turned it into this egregious act as I apparently became possessed by the spirit of a moustached man in a bowler hat and morning coat going Good Heavens I mustn’t gaze upon these images in public lest the constable haul me away!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.

[muffinlance]

My baby daughter got her adorable puffin-print dress absolutely CAKED in mud crawling around the yard and my first thought was "oh no her beautiful dress"

And my second thought was "oh huh it really WOULD be easy to unconsciously steer her away from playing in the dirt. Unlike my son, whose outfits are usually some kind of solid dark easily washed pants plus a shirt that doesn't trail in the dirt like a dress does."

Anyway something something gender roles start getting shoved on kids from literal birth, but with a little time to think about things, YOU TOO can let your children of any gender absolutely destroy their clothes in the dirt pit they're digging in your garden

[morganbritton132]

No one tells you when you get a Big Serious Job™ how many fucking abbreviations you’ll be forced to learn.

[crookedtines]

I finally took the time to photograph my vintage dip pen nib collection, and I need to share with you all how wonderful and diverse their designs are.

These two are my favorite. Just look at them! One of them is named Gorille and the other Mephisto, but to me they're little pumpkins.

And of course you gotta love the Pinocchio nib. You get to write with the nose of a tiny guy! Just not something you get to do anymore.

[valtsv]

anyone who thinks dostoevsky's writing is dry and humourless is missing out on passages like this

[max1461]

Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.

[mumblesplash]

comics as an art form make me insane. they’re so difficult to do well. there’s so many different ways to make sequential art work and most of them are deeply unintuitive. onomatopoeia that feels completely ridiculous to put down often reads seamlessly. panels on a page become a fractally nested image composition challenge that’s only possible to lose because if you do a good job no one will notice. you have to direct the readers’ eyes on a specific path across the page but also account for the fact that they won’t follow it. comic time isn’t linear. if the order of events isn’t crystal clear the story becomes incomprehensible. sometimes you need to do this on purpose. all this for a medium almost universally considered less effective than animation and less respectable than plain text. even its own name doesn’t take it seriously

[camaelczarka]

Louis dressing Lestat:

Armand dressing Lestat:

Lestat dressing himself:

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[alanaisalive]

Now that Eurovision is over, I want you all, especially the Americans, to take a good hard look at how the voting results turned out when people boycotted the event.

In the UK, the viewing figures were down about 2 million people compared to last year. Up to 2 million people made the conscious decision to not watch and not vote because of Israel's inclusion.

The final results of the public vote, Israel came in first place in the UK and got 12 points. Because the only people watching and voting were people who backed Israel or at least didn’t care one way or another.

This doesn't matter. It's a music contest. The boycott was still the right thing to do because it is just a show at the end of the day, and the viewing figures have more impact than the results.

But it is also a good object lesson to show you what happens if you boycott a vote over something that does matter. Choosing not to vote in, let's say, a presidential election will have similar results.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Penelope's final gambit, you will always be famous, no matter the subtext.