#it just affected them differently

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[supine-ly]

something something Jason was doomed the moment his mother named him

[uncanny-tranny]

It's honestly frustrating that I've seen non-Russian queer people almost bragging about how they would be illegal in Russia, labeled an extremist or terrorist. Russian queers are in danger, their government has made it clear where it stands, and it's made this effort for the better part of a decade (even longer, perhaps). This will kill people, don't mistake this for a quirky little proclamation from a government, akin to somebody saying the sky is pink. Russian queer people were already expressing their fear, and the least we can do now is express our love for them, and advocate with them.

Russian queer people, I love you. I love you all so much. I am so sorry, I cannot begin to express the grief that I feel, and I hope that you are safe. Words cannot encapsulate how I feel as a non-Russian, and I cannot hope to comprehend how it feels to actually be in this situation.

[yuudamari]

some yoohankim kisses

[wasyago]

so, would you?

nothing important under the cut, you don't need to look haha

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

hi!! howdy!! hello!! i have a question about the lights out au !! :D How did Poppy, Frank and Wally react to Howdy waking up? How did HE react to waking up?? sorry if this was already asked hhaha

lots of emotions! i will portray Two

[michajawkan]

encounter design is an interesting subject bc while I do enjoy games where every fight is designed to be fought and cleared by the party, it's not the whole of what an encounter can be and it's a shame that so many people think that's the only option, like, for some even just stepping back as little as removing the concept of "every encounter must be winnable" is too much for them

Like, again, I like walking into every fight knowing I am intended to be able to clear it in games built in that manner, it's very fun to navigate a battle with the foreknowledge that it's possible for me to handle in some way or another, but this design also inherently removes a lot of the tension from the situation, which is fine for a heroic fantasy adventure, but less useful in, say, a survival horror campaign

and "should encounters be assumed to be winnable" is just a tiny part of encounter design, which itself is just one segment of a larger game, and it already has such a strong effect on how the game feels, imagine how much it'd change if you altered even more of your approach, or removed the concept of them entirely

The mechanics inform the feel of the story you're telling through the game and I think that's really cool, and I really love seeing how different games emulate their different priorities through the design of their systems and it's a shame to see so many people disinterested in this and think any system out there can or even should do literally everything equally well all at once

[deoidesign]

My comic is so pretty...

The hiatus is letting me take a little extra time on these episodes, and I'm definitely putting it to good use!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Sharing is Caring!

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[somerandomcockroach]

A large burning canvas could be seen in the distance.

The neat fingers, full of small dents from the friction of the sword handle, caught a small flame, which immediately went out from faint pressure.

There was silence, a living silence, one of those that strains with its sound. A warm wind heated his battered, but carefully polished armor.

"You want to say something"

"I want" Blurr answered, turning sharply to the dark silhouette behind him that was quietly watching him until now. He clenched his fist with a grinding sound, where the spark died out, and demonstratively opened it towards the darkness. "And this is how you are paid for making the world freer! This is what remains of your legacy, and you react as if it doesn’t concern you at all!"

"It does not concern me anymore" the figure answered him calmly.

"Shockwave, stop!"

"Is that an order?"

"It's a request” His angry expression made it clear that this request was an obligation. “I just don't recognize you for these few months." His hand shook slightly with anger. Black smoke seeped through the cracks in his armor.

"I don't recognize myself for even longer time." Blurr visibly trembled at these words, realizing where the dialogue was leading. Shockwave slowly approached, his long, deformed fingers, three times longer than one of Blurr's fingers, carefully reached out to his hand and wrapped his palms in his huge paws, kneeling down to be on the same level with him. "Blurr, I-"

Blurr turned his head away so as not to see one piercing, but such a swampy dim light of his terrifying eye, which had become more precious to him than his weekly knightly brigandage. "Shut up. It's too early, we haven't agreed on when exactly to do this"

The dull mass of metal, which was only a tangible casing, after some hope of catching at least a spark of doubt, only lowered its head heavily. The crackling of the fire continued to be heard around. The soot reached them, gifting them with at least some warm light among the shades of cold before dying. Realization, regret, reluctance were not reflected in the knight's optics. His armor, always proudly looking into the face of danger, now reflected only the cowardly lights of the fire from behind. Despite this, he did not remove his hand from the strong lock until the blades themselves parted. Shockwave disappeared. Disappeared as he had done for the past few months.

Blurr turned back to the burning wall. From afar were heard screams, squeals, grinding, clanking. The column of fire did not subside, as if it was fed by fuel from secret reserves. It had been burning like that for hours, as if to show the greatness of this building over others that would have left only a column of smoke long ago.

Shockwave's last school of dark magic was burning out, as was the will of its creator to live.

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[elodieunderglass]

is PCRF still where you recommend people donate, or do you have another recommended group? I would like to donate but haven’t had time to do research.

(In reference to fundraising campaign I did for PCRF)

One of the most important things I have learned about conflict and healthcare and devastation, from someone who deals with them for their living, is that it is fractal, each piece of it containing unimaginable complexity, and that as a human you can’t really deal much with fractals that get more complex than, like, ferns. I am oversimplifying here. But the thing is that you cannot get bogged down endlessly in debating the nature of fractals. You decide on the level of complexity you can manage , perform an action and move on. You cannot take responsibility for every mathematical pattern that follows from your action; if you were a sort of cosmic weatherman, affecting the fates of people you’ve never met through some vague alchemy of intention, you’d know about it already. Therefore do not obsess too much over The Good Place levels of ethics and research, spiralling into fractals in search of the perfect. Therefore, also, if you want to give £2 to someone, feel free to ignore people who say “ah but if you give £2 to that guy they’ll spend it on something bad, and the whole fractal is rotten and broken.” You can only ever claim your own actions, a small piece of the fractal: to insist on your power over distant pieces of mathematical patterns is bonkers. It is religious nonsense. This is what I’ve learned and I thought it was pretty good, from someone who’d know.

So I believe the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund is not able to operate in Gaza at the moment, like many non-profits; I believe Medeciens Sans Frontiers aren’t in Gaza at the moment and that’s pretty dire indicator. However, they are mobilised in Lebanon.

The reasons why I selected PCRF to support include the fact that they have been able to deliver material aid, had pragmatic routes to evacuate children, and were reporting some success in providing/stabilising healthcare infrastructure. They have stated from the beginning that their intent was to support, and ideally restore, healthcare infrastructure, without which you cannot run a nation. I have known healthcare professionals who traveled with PCRF to work on complex cases prior to this conflict and I personally know/respect one of their prominent supporters, which helped me to make this choice. I also was hoping in the future that Gaza would have restored healthcare infrastructure and PCRF had stated their commitment to doing so.

I have received and listened to criticism about this choice, and I firmly believe that no matter what choice you make to support a cause, you’ll receive some measure of criticism (the fractal! Elodie you must consider the fractal nature of reality at all times! Scrupulous frantic morality is necessary at all times !), and that this should not stop you. To explain a bit about this, the criticisms I’ve received have mostly fallen into two camps:

- “the wrong sort of charity” - one concern is PCRF are not able to promise that their work will never support Hamas supporters or their families. This has been raised as “PCRF support Hamas”. but genuinely, given the realities of conflict, it is not practical or sane to require that people bring proof of political affiliation when seeking healthcare for their children. I’m comfortable saying that this, like other risks of fundraising/donation, is always possible but not a major consideration for me.

- “the wrong sort of fundraiser” - conversely some people stated they’d prefer I support individual families seeking evacuation through GFMs. This is also fine but my choice in the charity was partly in thinking about families who do not have GFMs, and children who do not have families. I also felt, at the time of fundraising, that supporting healthcare infrastructure was very worthy in a different way - after all, at the time the same people doing GFMs were also using/needing what healthcare was available.

My shoulders are broad, and I’m comfortable with these criticism. I am fully aware that this is not a complete solution but I personally continue to support the charity. I am explaining this to indicate that there will always be criticisms; you must accept that you can only take a small piece of the fractal, and you must accept that quite a lot of the fractal was never in your gift to control.

The situation is constantly changing and with the departure of organisations there is genuinely less hope of materially restoring the infrastructure in Gaza. At the moment donations to PCRF will likely be mobilised to Lebanon. It may be that this speaks to you. It does still speak to me.

Ultimately while it’s important to do research, it is always going to become fractal, especially in conflict situations. Nobody’s ever going to be able to point to a perfect thing that will fix everything and absolve us of criticism, you know? You will always only be able to pick up a piece of the fractal.

Now moving away from “what I personally support” there are many people more informed than myself and I would like to direct you to them as well. @gothhabiba is someone I follow who has posted several very useful posts about this and has been extremely informative, and spent a lot of time and attention on this, so I would defer to the resources and fundraisers they’ve put together. Her response to a similar question has been “pick 1-3 personal fundraisers” - this is a piece of the fractal. At the moment if what you want to do most is “materially help people in Gaza” that seems like the best option.

Also he doesn’t post much on social media, but when you get the opportunity to read a scientific article or anything by https://x.com/sullivanprof it’s worth stopping and processing. To me, Richard’s life work really shows how a piece of the fractal unpacks to reveal the whole world. I think if you have emotional space to research, it’s honestly a good investment to read some of his “manifestos” on intersections of healthcare and conflict.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[warning-heckboop]

Oh to be able to make the complex lore comic that lives in my head about the concept of fairies, anti-fairies, and pixies once being a civilization of one single species of fae that splintered both metaphorically and literally due to internal conflict

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

What can I say? They're my favorite.

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.