#but Jewish food discourse is not the place for nuance

[edenfenixblogs]

Hey. Hey, friend. Come closer. I gotta tell you something.

This is just an incorrect statement about raisins in general and I’m genuinely concerned that you would characterize them as delicious.

Just a random thing I love about the Jewish community:

Jews talking to antisemites trying to twist our culture into something evil in order to justify eliminating us en masse: I understand your concern but that’s actually a harmful thing to say. Can I interest you in hundreds of sources I took the liberty of citing and fact checking and providing links for and thousands of years of history to back up my statement?

Jews talking to other Jews about opinions on Jewish food: I WILL BURN THIS ENTIRE HOUSE TO THE GROUND IF YOU DO NOT ADMIT THE INCONTROVERTIBLE TRUTH AND WISDOM IN MY STANCE ON KUGEL.

Exhibit A: A Perfect Food. Look at Her. She’s Beautiful!

Exhibit B: You absolute monster. What have you DONE TO HER?!

Is that cinnamon? And raisins??? Where is the crust???? This is somehow a disaster, a tragedy, and a crime all at once.

Unacceptable.

(งಠ_ಠ)ง

[eponinesflowers]

Why are we even arguing in the first place? Discourse is pointless when both sides don't listen to one another in order to understand. I get that you think im just a pro Israel anti Palestine troll. Despite the fact that i stated in my inicial message that i was against killing from BOTH sides of this conflict, that every human life is precious. My heart breaks over every single injured child in this conflict both physically and mentally, not to mention about those who died. The reason im on anon is not because im a troll but because i don't want to be personally dragged into this. I don't post or reblog anything from either side. Because i would rather not insert myself into places i do not belong to like so many people from the US like to do. I am neither Israeli, nor Palestinian. Nor Jewish nor Arab. We could argue forever about nuances of what one said or the other because we essentially have a very similar stance in this. The reason i wrote to you is to present food for thoughts. Which i probably failed since your answers derailed very quickly from what i was trying to point out and became generic talking points i see from everywhere. Your blog doesn't need to become this. Frankly, i was surprised you answered. Because you could just, you know, not....at any rate, i hope i will see a lot more about genocide in Sudan for example or hundreds of thousands dead in Ukraine. Almost half a million people were killed there and there are no protests, no posts about it. Maybe that's why so many people are concerned about this whole pro Palestine movement all over the world? I don't remember any Harvard students marching when Ukraine was attacked, unprovoked. Unlike in this case which was started with enormous terrorist attack. The USA went to war half a globe away when they were attacked by terrorists. Just a reminder. Again, no need to argue, these are not talking points, just wanted to provoke some critical thinking. But since i only elicited a defence reaction, i guess i failed. I hope you have a good day.

Sorry that my responses were so disappointing and generic ig🙄 Maybe you shouldn’t tell someone that they’re not able to critically think about a topic if you don’t want to argue? And I never said any of those things about you, I just think that there’s a lot that you haven’t considered based on your asks to me.

I have been vocal about ending the oppression of all people and liberation for all, but I tend to reblog posts that come across my feed and I can’t control the content of those. Additionally, my tax dollars aren’t funding the deaths of those groups of people, the U.S. government is providing aid to the victims of mass violence rather than the perpetrators in those countries.

I do understand wanting to be anonymous, but you have access to my blog and information about me while I’m having a conversation with a faceless, nameless person, which isn’t helpful for discourse imo.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Goblin Design Basics

(Here is the masterpost)

Okay I’m impatient with myself and my old laptop is struggling. I’ll have a new one right after Christmas though, finally. It was supposed to be a college graduation gift but Stuff Happened.

So anyway! Gonna start my goblin design posts with some sketchbook bits! (And some explanations on my design process)

(Disclaimer: I am a white Christian and I am aware of the ongoing discourse regarding whether or not goblins are inherently anti Semitic, or whether it’s okay to use goblins if you’re just careful about it. I can’t comment on the topic much because I’m not Jewish, but if anyone has concerns about the way I draw and depict goblins please feel free to bring it up with me. I can’t be aware of every tiny nuance in controversial topics, things slip past me, it’s possible for my designs to accidentally hit on some caricatures/sterotypes I’m unaware of.)

I decided some years ago to make my own designs of some fantasy races that are most commonly used as the "ugly, stupid, evil" default villain fodder in fantasy stories. I was making my own fantasy world more nuanced, and I wanted to make my own designs for those groups that were more neutral.

Goblins were the ones I ended up having the most fun with, I went full cave amphibian with them, originally based just on axolotls but later expanding to other amphibians, and especially frogs. Why? Because it’s fun that’s why. Humanoids evolving from things other than primates makes for some incredibly fun fantasy biology. Goblins are usually associated with caves, so to combat the typical "they live in caves to show they’re creepy evil creatures of darkness" trope, I thought about real animals that live in caves and the adaptations goblins might need for that lifestyle (and later expanded them to also live in forests and jungles so dense they rarely see the sun, or swamps and wetlands.)

(Description: a sketchbook drawing of a goblin, outlined in black ink and colored with pale purple and orange markers, having many spots and stripes on their skin. They are posed with one leg up like they have their foot on a large rock, smiling at the viewer and waving a hand. Labels point to different aspects of their anatomy I will discuss below. They are wearing a short jumpsuit with a belt, off the shoulders, covered in pockets.)

I often default to green with brown markings, but my goblins come in as many colors and patterns as real life amphibians because it’s very fun. So what adaptations have I given them for living in places like caves and dense forests and such? Well I made them lanky, like a frog standing on its back feet. Their joints are incredibly flexible, making them natural contortionists. Their hands and feet look very similar; long digits with little claws, equally capable of grabbing things with their toes as with their hands, which comes in handy when climbing or gathering food in odd spots. They have very big ears and eyes, as well as sensory whiskers and barbels, to enhance their senses in dark spaces with lots of obstacles. And their noses are little more than a pair of nostrils in a flat face, because they evolved from amphibians and they can still close their nostrils underwater. They don’t have closed off ears like most amphibians but to make up for that they have skin flaps that can seal off their ear hole underwater. And of course, like other amphibians, they have moist skin that needs to stay moist.

Also their clothes are made of pockets because living in places with scarce resources or hard to reach resources requires the ability to carry lots of stuff at once. Goblins collect any useful thing they find, so they invented ways to carry as much stuff with as little effort as possible.

(Description: simplified ink drawings of a frog skeleton and a goblin skull with pale blue and bright green outlines of the flesh outside the bones.)

Frogs have very flat triangular skulls, with huge eye sockets. Goblin skulls look a little more like that of a tarsier, which is a freaky lookin nocturnal primate with massive eyes. I love them, they are right on the border of ugly and cute. Big eye sockets, flat jaws full of needle sharp teeth. No collarbone, to help with the flexibility. Some animals just do not have collarbones, which allows them to squeeze through any hole big enough to fit their head through, like cats.

And yes, obviously when I decided to make goblins froggish, I also decided they could do the frog throat thing.

(Description: pencil drawing of a goblin in profile, from the shoulders up, balooning their throat out like a frog. The sound effect "bwerp" in front of them indicates a frog like noise. They have many stripes and spots on their skin.)

Goblin language is basically impossible for non-goblins to learn, because it utilizes ribbits and other odd noises you just can’t make if you don’t have a goblin throat. (Just one more reason my fantasy world uses sign language as a common language.)

Next post shows some color variations