#i really need to change this tag

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Spiritual seekers need one another as mirrors. A member of the Hopi nation once asked me about our holy days. I was telling him about Passover, our celebration of freedom, and Sukkot, our Feast of Tabernacles, and how they fit in with the cycles of the year. "I think I get it," he said finally. "You people don't want to be in slavery. And you want to pass this on to your children. But when you tell your kids on Passover, 'We have to go away from here; we can't stay here because it will cost us our freedom,' your kids will say, 'Yeah, but what are we going to eat?' So you teach them how to bake bread on stones, how to roast a lamb if you are hungry, how to find dandelion greens, and so on. When the kids ask, 'But where will we stay?' you show them how to build a lean-to, so they will have somewhere to live." An Indian perspective on the mitzvot to eat the Passover lamb with matzot and bitter herbs and to build a sukkah on Sukkot gave me a completely different insight into my own traditions.

-Jewish with Feeling, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. 2005, p. 198-199

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Sublime Equine.

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[ducktracy]

there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[weafurry]

Beast of some description

[bacchuschucklefuck]

doing chibi is a good design exercise bc it forces u to think on shapes n essential details, essentially thumbnailing ur designs. its also a terrible design exercise bc it ends up looking cute no matter what

[theoldkyokodied]

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

[renshengs]

hmm i do think that danmei and dangai (censored danmei cdrama adaptations) being many non-chinese fandom people's first impression of chinese media has given them some misconceptions about mainstream chinese media, and it shows in a way that i find very frustrating when seeing discussions about cdramas on here. dangai dramas aside, even if government censorship didn't exist, the chances of your favorite cdrama gay ship becoming canon is about as high as the chances of any of those iconic homoerotic male friendships in a western TV show becoming canon. which is to say: extremely low.

what i think is that internationally huge danmei fandoms like mdzs and tgcf and drama adaptations like cql and shl have really fucked with people's conceptualization of danmei, in that they're using it as this reference point when analyzing relationships in all other forms of cn media, including cdramas and chinese games, which then manifests into people making very bold, very dubious claims about "queercoding" because 2 characters from a random cdrama reminds them of the one or two danmeis they'd encountered that shaped their entire perception of chinese media. basically it's this meme:

many people here need to understand that cdramas and chinese films are obviously mainstream forms of fictional media in china, just like how the mcu or the doctor who franchise is mainstream in the US and UK, or like shonen is mainstream in japan. not to burst your bubble of happy ignorance, but homoromantic relationships such as qingming/boya from the ying yang master are—for lack of a better term—fujobait. they are fujobait. bromances, because those sell well and everyone knows it. popular ships like bakudeku were not actually made canon in mha because shonen is mainstream, and in most industries geared toward maximizing capital, having full-on gay people front and center is considered a monetarily risky move. which sucks, of course, but china is absolutely no different. i promise you that if the govt removed their censorship laws for TV broadcasts, your favorite gay ship from mysterious lotus casebook or the blood of youth or fangs of fortune still wouldn't be canon. they might be allowed a bit more intimacy due to the lack of restrictive filtering, but they are not going to be sucking face for the same reason that gojo and geto from jjk didn't suck face.

danmei is still widely considered niche and risky in china, and if you haven't seen the recent news, authors are still getting arrested for writing it. assuming that chinese fiction, mainstream chinese fiction in particular, operate like dangais where the two guys with the most gay tension would be made explicitly canon were the censors to be lifted, is frankly pretty ridiculous. dangai dramas are adapted from danmeis, which are stories centered on a gay romance and narratively depend on the two guys falling in love. non-dangai dramas are very much... not that, hence why people shouldn't watch them expecting a censored danmei and then forcing assumptions of "my ship would be canon if only it weren't for censorship" on them.

it's very clear when someone who knows absolutely nothing about the actual situation with danmei and queer existence and mainstream TV censorship in china is trying to push their, if i put it crudely, "boss baby meme" perspective onto cmedia. fandom is all about poking at interactions between your favorite characters and giggling and speculating, but i think lots of fandom people (many of them safe in the pockets of their more progressive areas) view govt censorship as this big abstract dam that, if broken, would result in the canonization of all their favorite ships, which is not only an incredibly naive belief but also one that shows how much they view TV censorship as more of a personal inconvenience that's preventing their favorite ships from kissing on screen instead of the looming, deep-rooted issue depriving mainland chinese people of creative freedom it actually is. with cmedia fandoms there's a specific widely popularized "they're so gay omg how did censorship not notice" gag when there's any perceived homoromantic undertones in a story that's both rather insensitive and also ignorant, and many dangai and cdrama fandoms in particular (donghua fans too, link click shippers i'm looking directly at you) could really use some more education and sensitivity regarding this.

i've been in danmei & cdrama fandom spaces for years and post-pandemic this kind of nonsense has definitely gotten worse, especially when you compare shipping discussions here to shipping discussions in cn fandoms. here every 2 seconds someone makes an off-color censorship joke about tgcf donghua and over on douyin they are straight up commenting under the nezha sequel announcement post if there's going to be an oubing kissing scene. granted i obviously cannot see or know everything going on in cn fandom spaces because they are incomprehensibly enormous, but in all the spaces i've been in i've never seen a single censorship joke from anyone. why do people here absolutely insist on making them?

anyway. fandom be normal about chinese media challenge!

[owlheartt]

Something I really like about timebomb is that Ekko actually knows what he's getting into.

I'm not really seeing it get talked about but in season 1 they mention that Ekko and the firelights help people addicted to shimmer get off it and lead more fulfilling lives within the community. I should probably rewatch the scene for the exact wording (might be misremembering tbh) but that comment implies A LOT.

First: Ekko's mission is helping people where he can, he would probably try and help Jinx even if he wasn't in love with her

Second: He has experience dealing with severe mental illness as that often goes hand in hand with drug abuse, namely depression/suicidal ideation like what Jinx was exhibiting

Third: He's probably mapped out best course of action FOR dealing with this and has already figured out his own limits/boundaries. Meaning he knew what he was getting into trying to talk Jinx out of suicide, and was thus more equipped to deal with the aftermath

Fourth: He's probably helped ex members of Silco's gang. The firelights seem to have a theme of healing and repairing and recovering, so they've probably also learned to forgive. If they're mission is to rebuild the lanes into a safe space, they can't exclude people they don't like, they have to make room for them. I think they fought Silco out of necessity, and I doubt Jinx would be the first person they help who's killed one of them.

These all might be a bit of a stretch but I think it really fits. Beyond that, it shows that Ekko can ACTUALLY help Jinx. As much as unconditional love can do, Ekko has the tools for Jinx's recovery and a path ready for her. He also probably knows that her "healthy" will look different from AU Powder's "healthy." On top of that, I expect he knows how to respect her even in the middle of psychotic breaks and won't agitate her already frail mental state

[cobaltfluff]

suuuuper late pocky day akeshus ;w;

[sforzesco]

miscellaneous roman nonsense lmao I very briefly thought about un curling octavian's hair, but cleopatra 1963's influence remains as strong as ever

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[bread-is-my-life]

Big shout out to @tekitothemagpie and all the stainmight fans for cheering me on and motivating me. I love all of you very much so consider this animation a big thank you gift for y'all (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 🎃👻🍬

[paper-possum-party-pal]

Triumphant Return?

First time creating and posting ace attorney fanart! I might make more I might not, we’ll see what happens. I couldn’t not draw this tho

Original below

[shadesofmauve]

Mass Effect galaxy map

(For the Rhi Shepard universe)

I've been writing, if by 'writing' one means 'making a new galaxy map to use as a reference, because I'm too picky.'

I copied some symbology from Droot1986's excellent galaxy map. I also used Engorn's map as a reference, but ultimately the clusters and connections are based on the wiki. All systems within a cluster are listed, with inhabited planets in parentheses.

(...yeah, I should probably make a legend, but I only made it for my reference, so).

Features/changes

The relay in the Sol system only connects to Arcturus. This is how it's supposed to work in canon lore; Arcturus is important because it's a gateway system, while Sol is a dead end.

(Also, Sol is now in basically the right place compared to the underlying artist's impression of the milky way. Thank you NASA.)

Batarian's now have some space of their own, because lumping all batarian space into the human Systems Alliance was just BEGGING for a war. Like, WTF. Their government is flat out evil but that doesn't mean we just get to say their planets are ours now.

Combined inner and outer council space because idgaf.

There's a new, boringly named relay between Kite's Nest, Petra, and Exodus, because I needed one in chapter 14.

If a cluster had written lore about where it was in the galaxy, I tried to reflect that — so Styx Theta, Hawking Eta, and the Pangea Expanse are all close to the galactic core, Sentry Omega is on a political border, etc. Otherwise, I adjusted location to make the relay routes clearer. (Also I wanted the giant hub that is Omega to be almost opposite the Serpent Nebula and the Citadel)..

I imagine that there are actually a LOT more mapped clusters in Council Space than we see; they were just never relevant to the game. If not, the vaunted 'all relays lead to the Citadel' reaper web is just flat out wrong. Omega has more connections, and quite a few other clusters have as many. If there are more inhabited clusters in Citadel Space it also makes the veritable explosion of humanity look a little less ridiculous. (Seriously, humans have been on the galactic scene for thirty years. LOOK at how far we've gone. Council races are right to be freakin' terrified, the Sol system was like one of those plants with exploding seed pods where you bump it and POOF now they're EVERYWHERE). So let's assume the rest of the galaxy is as cluttered as Systems Alliance space, it's just not been relevant to our anthropocentric bag of dicks worldview.

Anyway. What the fuck is even up with the Attican Traverse?

[buttercupshands]

*looking at isat ss discord* my power of being silly got out of control

or how I tried understanding rpg maker basics by literally trying to do one (1) thing I really wanted to see ever since seeing Loop unused sprites lying on wiki months ago

the reason I mentioned isat ss discord was simply bc guys were the first people who saw me trying to draw close to pixel sprite face sprite for Loop to,,, do something at some point just to see how it works

and nope I'm not making this into anything, but I really like the fact that I managed to do this

(now with video post edited into this sentence!)