#i just. i need sides content.

[blazethecheeto]

no no guys hear me out. hear me out here. what if. what if thomas released the finale pt.1 on october 19. because not only is it the anniversary of the first episode, but it is a saturday this year, which is when he posts videos. and and and hear me out, tell me if i'm off my rockers here, this doesn't make sense but it does to me. it's the eighth anniversary of sanders sides, so if they introduce orange, there will be eight characters in the series, including thomas. sorry that made me sound too insane. but like think about it, it's a perfect day to release it! just my prediction.

[loemius]

here’s my hot take of the night:

the e-temples that have been cropping up lately are cool, and im glad to see people making specific spaces to come together to worship. that’s awesome! i’m very here for that as a concept. i love nothing more than to see the theoi get the praise they deserve.

that being said, i am very wary about the amount of people i have seen calling themselves priests/priestesses lately. not even just in the e-temples! ive seen multiple people in the tags who have in their bio “priest(ess) of [deity].” i realize most people probably don’t mean harm by it, but it gets under my skin. to call yourself clergy implies a specific level of knowledge and experience with a religion (which isn’t my business to get involved in your praxis like that, that’s personal unless you wanna share it), but more importantly, official recognition by an established institution. there are not that many of these (that i am aware of) for hellenic polytheism. calling yourself clergy is simply that — calling yourself that. there’s no backing for it, and it genuinely concerns me.

we as the polytheist community talk a lot about harmful practices in spirituality, things like spiritual psychosis or cultural appropriation, which are important topics to discuss. it’s been said before and i’ll say again — people claiming to be spiritual authorities of some kind without any kind of proof can be very dangerous. i don’t assume anyone has bad intentions. i give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that everyone is just trying to help other people worship. but it doesn’t change the fact that calling yourself a priest(ess) will make impressionable or unsure people look up to you, and that is a hell of a lot of responsibility. i am concerned that there are minors running these kinds of blogs. that’s a lot of pressure on someone’s shoulders, especially to put on someone who is still growing up and developing their research and critical thinking skills. i don’t want to gatekeep or anything like that. im very glad to see minors having really good experiences with their faith, that they’re excited to share it with others. but it just concerns me.

im certainly not as experienced as other practitioners on this site, having had about two years of experience at this point, but i am very wary of anyone who claims to be any kind of authority on anything unless you can back it up. regardless of if your blog says that you’re not an authority, calling yourself clergy of any kind implies that. people will take it that way. it inherently implies a level of authority, knowledge, and experience on a particular subject, which is usually backed up by having an official institution that recognizes you.

perhaps this is a little callous of me, but in the same way that when someone makes a claim about the theoi academically, i expect them to have sources to prove it, i expect clergy to have some kind of proof of their authority. otherwise, what are you doing that’s different than any other tumblr blog?

to be clear, i don’t have an issue with these devotional spaces. i simply take an issue with people referring to themselves as clergy when that is a particular term with a particular context and a particular implication. words have power. i earnestly think if people just called themselves something like ‘stewards’ of a particular temple, i wouldn’t be so bothered by it. or just call yourself a devotee of a particular god. ultimately, at the end of the day, the words we use have power and implications, and that has to be acknowledged and respected. send tweet

[dykecory]

CLH ART DUMP JUMPSCARE AAGHHHH 💥💥💥

(yea it's mostly rayfrog) and whatever the fuck this is

[suntails]

(mild gore)

fealty

[analogical-loving-years]

Thinking back to the moment in My NEGATIVE Thinking where Logan says "I don't necessarily mind your company", Logan often downplays his emotions so I bet he liked being around Virgil a lot more than just not minding it

[adamsrcnan]

thinking about kevin begging riko and tetsuji to let him take a history class and then agreeing to do all of riko's assignments, whatever it took, because he loves it that much that he was willing to go to those lengths to still pursue that passion. then thinking about all his history books, him watching documentaries and memorising a million interesting facts that he rarely gets to share with anyone. or what if the post cards he sent jean were scribbled with little tidbits of historical info about the places he'd been?? what's his favourite historical time period?? how far back does his interest go??? what's his favourite historical civilisation? who is his favourite historical figure?? what historical landmarks does he wish to see?? why history to begin with??? it's just so endearing i wish we knew more about his passion for it because yes exy is his legacy by birth right but also there's so much more to him than just that

[sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes]

Roman and Logan were kinda mean to Patton at times at the start of the show, such as both saying in unison "don't screw it up" when he gets excited in the Q&A, before they kinda learned their lesson in Growing Up

I wonder if that's why he grew attached to Virgil the quickest, because he could identify with him more

[bylrndgm]

JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS (2020) // JULIE E OS FANTASMAS (2011) 1.01 - Wake Up // 1.01 - Enfrentando Fantasmas -> Julie meets the Band.

[the-badger-mole]

On the Unredeemed

Unredeemed villains are important in fiction. I feel like that needs to be said. There is a trend in recent years (probably since Wicked became a hit) of people wanting to see monsters redeemed. I'm not against that (per-se... glowers in Maleficent), but also, I feel like we do lose something when we lean into the idea that the monster gets to make good.

Fiction can be really useful for teaching us about life. I remember seeing a quote some time ago on Pinterest or something that said something along the lines of "fairytales are important not because they tell us dragons are real, but because they tell us that dragons can be slayed". That has been on my mind a lot recently when I see discussions about characters like Azula and (more recently) Ozai. They are fictional characters with super magic fire powers, but they represent something real- they represent the cycle of abuse in families, and while I understand the impulse to absolve someone as young as Azula, I think it's also important to tell the story where she isn't redeemed.

One reason that most Azula redemption stories bother me is because of the responsibility they tend to place on Zuko as her older brother, despite the fact that she victimized him probably more than anyone in her life (that we get to see. I don't think her soldiers believed her death threat for no reason). There are plenty of stories about the victims of abuse needing to be the bigger person to keep their families together and being villainized when they don't (I think by now we all understand that Terri was not the villain of Soul Food). We need stories about knowing when it's okay to walk away, and that illustrate the idea that "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb".

In a time when more people are talking openly about going low contact or completely cutting off family members- close family members- I personally think that seeing stories about coming out of the other side of it, of building a new family, healing from the past, and dealing with the residual guilt that comes with "turning your back on family" even when it's the right call, is helpful in the same way that those fairytales about slayable dragons are.

I'm not saying any of this to discourage Azula redemption stories. In fact I would love to see more. Stories that have Azula confronting what she did to the people she should have loved most, and have her considering what to do with the knowledge going forward, instead of just using her past abuse and mental health to gloss over the real harm she did. I want to see her grappling to accept the fact that no one- not her brother, not Iroh, not her friends- owes her forgiveness, and then dealing with all the complex emotions that come with just one of them actually forgiving her. But also, I want to see stories where Zuko gets to let go of his father and sister and go on to be supported in that decision. Because to him, they were dragons, and they were slain.

[chickenoptyrx]

Is another Calvin and Hobbes redraw.

[chelldoscocaine]

christening my new sketchbook with top surgery whizzer. need to practice muscle stuff more this is just the beginning im going to be so annoying about this

[reasonsforhope]

Heads up/warning that I'm going to start posting articles related to the Israel-Palestine War

I've worked really, really hard to keep my blog about positive news only, and that's going to continue - these posts will be only about good news related to the war.

Of which there really, really isn't much, so I don't know that there will be a lot of posts, but I will be posting articles about humanitarian aid reaching those who need it and actions that will prevent more lives from being taken.

I know that, no matter my position on the war, this is something that would be very controversial and make a lot of people upset, so I wanted to be explicit about my position on this - and my posting policy, which is not the same thing. I also wanted to give people a heads up because I know the war in general is really, really triggering for a lot of people right now, for a lot of different reasons. I'll be tagging all relevant posts, so if screening those out is something that you need to do, you can.

I have worked very hard to make this blog a space with only good news because I know how much it can matter to have just one place, if nowhere else, that you can count on to not give you emotional whiplash with horrible news. To know you have one place you can go where you are guaranteed not to see bad news that will send you into a tailspin. That's why I've had a policy of not including signal boosts or PSAs about tragedies, no matter what they are, on this blog. (I do post about some of that stuff, including the Israel-Palestine War, on my main blog, though. I consider this blog to be me trying to run a public service, basically, and so have specific policies for myself around that, including my editorial and fact-checking standards.)

I'm going to be honest, I was really, really hoping the war would end after a couple of weeks, which has historically not been uncommon for wars with/involving Israel.

But that's clearly not happening, and I can't keep not acknowledging what's happening on here, so, this post.

With that, I imagine people probably want to know my actual stance on the war, since that's what I'll be posting in accordance with.

So, here's the official stance of this blog:

Every time a civilian is killed, it is a tragedy; Every time a child is killed, it is a tragedy, no matter their nationality. I condemn all antisemitism and all Islamophobia.

I support all calls for a ceasefire, as well as demands that Israel immediately stop its repeated bombing of hospitals, ambulances, shelters (including UN shelters), and refugee camps.

There is no situation in which the repeated and/or intentional bombing of hospitals is justified.

There is no situation in which the repeated and/or intentional bombing of shelters or refugee camps is justified.

There is no situation in which the repeated and/or intentional bombing of ambulances is justified.

There is no situation in which the killing of children is justified. Yet more children have now been killed in Gaza than in all global conflict zones combined in each year since 2019.

There is no situation in which cutting off an entire country and/or territory's supply of food and water is justified.

Yes, this applies to every group involved in the war, including countries supplying either side, and any countries or non-state organizations who may yet join the fighting.

The initial Hamas attack on Israel was a tragedy. The continued Israeli bombardment and invasion of Palestine is also a tragedy.

Most of the things I post will be about aid reaching Palestinians or news about tangible, confirmed progress toward a ceasefire. I probably will not be posting good news posts about aid reaching Israel, unless it's explicitly and only humanitarian and/or barring drastic unforeseen changes in circumstance. This is because as of yesterday, November 7, the Palestinian death toll is over 10,000 to Israel's roughly 1,400 (only about 200 of whom have been killed in the past month, starting on October 8, aka outside of the initial attack by Hamas). At least 3,195 children have died in Gaza, 33 in the West Bank, and 29 in Israel.

The Palestinian death toll is nearly 8 times the Israeli death toll. The number of children killed is 110 times higher in Palestine than Israel. (Source for death toll here, ratios via calculator.) Every single one of those deaths is a tragedy - and there have been far, far too many tragedies this past month.

(On a related note, Israel stands very, very little chance of actually eliminating Hamas with this war. The US has attempted this same strategy and failed many times: the US failed to eliminate the communist/North Korean regime in the Korean War, which is technically still ongoing 70 years later; failed to eliminate the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War; failed to eliminate numerous groups of Iraqi insurgents in the Iraq War, which triggered Iraq's civil war; and failed to eliminate the Taliban in the Afghanistan War, even though that war lasted for literally 20 years. Afghanistan is once again under total Taliban control.)

The last thing we need is another 20 year war. The last thing we need is more civilian deaths. Bombing civilian settlements, as well as hospitals, shelters, and refugee camps are war crimes under international law, meaning that both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes.

It's time for the war crimes to stop.

Humanitarian aid reaching civilians is good news, and I will be posting accordingly.

Ceasefire now.

[tytoalbatross]

god damn i do not post often but can i talk about intentionality for a second?? one second please

i'm gonna be talking about bg3 but this really applies to any fandom space. people will, surface-level, agree that a Black character is not getting enough content compared to their white counterparts because it's. obvious . take wyll, who is several hours behind on voiced lines compared to other origins despite being one of the original five (before they added karlach and whiteified her too but that's another post). it's hard to deny cold hard facts

but then instead of engaging in content that uplifts Black characters and creators, they'll go right back to pumping out more and more content of just their white faves. on its own, it's not actively harmful, but here's what the implication is, whether they acknowledge it or not: yes wyll has less in-game content, yes his writing didn't get the attention it deserved, therefore i don't like him as much. it only perpetuates wyll's lack of content by contributing to his sidelining in fandom spaces

what i would love for fans who claim to be allies to do is to step out of the comfort zone of their initial favorites (which can, in fact, be biased!) and start pursuing content centering Black characters with intentionality. like all things, anti-racism (actively pushing back against racism rather than simply "Not Being Racist") takes practice and effort. you can't really agree with us that wyll needs more content, then in the same breath say that it's because of that that he's not interesting to you . the point was right in front of you doing a jig and you still missed it

[blazethecheeto]

screaming crying throwing up he's actually making sasi videos i rejoice i live once again

[skz-miroh]

science side of tumblr please explain why I am unable to consume and process media like a normal human being

[pikopiikko]

i am getting barraged CONSTANTLY on all sides by STUFF THAT SHORT CIRCUITS MY BRAIN THIS EPISODE