#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.

[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

[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

[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

[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.

[camaelczarka]

Louis dressing Lestat:

Armand dressing Lestat:

Lestat dressing himself:

[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.

[phantom-of-the-501st]

Remember that this is not the proof that they love each other

That was a last-ditch attempt from Crowley to get Aziraphale to stay

This is the proof that they love each other

Their love wasn't just made real because they kissed

It always existed

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[blackbatest]

my most controversial batman opinion to date