#it made sense regarding the context

[ali-vault]

I promise this made sense when I sent it

@yeeteddemigod

[xxplastic-cubexx]

just read the new mutants issue where Charles chose to stay behind in space and my god the juxtaposition between Charles trusting Erik and Erik joining the hellfire club and wondering at his own trust worthiness. I wonder how much of Charles decision was him ultimately trying to avoid the fact that his first class had seemingly betrayed mutant kind and not be willing to face them and how much of it was Dani and Illyana's reaction to him having Karma mind control Illyana. the fact that Illyana was depending on him to ease her mind through limbo and in choosing to stay he forced karma to do it instead, probably fucking up their relationship in the process.

I love him, this is crazy, how much of this is him trying to runaway and how much is this him not trusting himself to fix things and how much is it just him trusting Erik?

i keep trying to put into words my exact thoughts about the sitch but there really is a lot for one issue aintit... oh charles you and your brain...

[longagoitwastuesday]

ngl it sort of pisses me off the way adults regard Gojo in Jujutsu Kaisen at times. Which could be a very interesting and poignant point in a good way if well written, but as it is it becomes mainly just frustrating and sad in a negative way.

Nanami saying Gojo never cared about anything or anyone other than himself crashes interestingly with Kusakabe saying the whole situation was just all his fault because he refused to kill Itadori. The students are very aware of those aspects of Gojo's personality, but overall they seem to regard him with way more kindness and fondness even when at their rudest, not truly coinciding with either Nanami's or Kusakabe's views.

[moe-broey]

You know Henriette is lowkey kind of anime (like the SuMo anime) Lusamine-core. To me

[scarycranegame]

people who think mouthwashing is about rape clearly haven't played how fish is made/the last one and then another

[boy-armageddon]

Personally I think the little phenomenon w/ Johnny Whitney writing a just genuinely sort of devastating song once per every record or so (or twice! take, well, Take Me to the Sea 4 example. actually three times maybe. talking about specifically georgia + my organ sounds like… here and also bonetrees and a broken heart a little. also also As Brass And Satin just feels utterly melancholic in its near entirety) is that he just wakes up face down covered in blood in the studio, his own or someone else’s he can’t tell, shaking and grasping some shoddily scrawled out lyrics on a rlly very old piece of paper. The rest of the band might be like “johnny what the fuck happened” and he just springs 2 his feet like “oh haha nothing :> im fine don’t worry. nothing happened!!!!!!! anyways i have this cool new idea 4 a song wanna hear” and any time anyone tries 2 ask about it he immediately dodges the question and moves on2 a diff topic. He can explain what it’s about, but any time someone asks about the inspiration he gets nervous and is like “ohhh ummm. I 4got! Any other song though lol” and doesn’t wait 4 an answer. that’s just a theory though a Seattle theory

[constellationcrowned]

((All signs point to Kariom being a lot like Serban in his youth. Was he a stern kid? Yes. Grumpy? Yes. But he also had fun and was mischievous. He made pinwheels, he wanted to fly kites, he drew and colored in one of Flynn's gardening books (he drew constellations ofc but no doubt other things too) he ate so many cattails by the lake he almost choked to death, he ran around and got into trouble, he tried to make friends, and so on.

It's important to remember that he was a kid and he wasn't always so obsessively driven by his duty---and I mean driven to the point of where he, as an adult, considers all of that stuff as stupid, inconsequential, etc, and prefers not to think on it, driven to the point of self degradation (whether he acknowledges it or not and let's face it; he doesn't), etc, etc---such a severe reaction has to have a cause. Something changed him, something shifted his focus and it was definitely something huge. I imagine it's in part due to whatever happened to the Solomonari and his involvement on top of a variety of other things that built up over time until he could hold nothing else.))

[pizzabookbuying]

I actually love that while usually movie/tv versions of book characters end up oversimplifying the character (especially for enemies to lovers ships) Vampire diaries did the exact opposite.

TV Damon said complex, he said yes I do bad things yes I’m morally grey yes I will have a long and investing character arc. Book Damon said oh? Elena doesn’t love me? Fine! YES I MURDERED ALL THOSE PEOPLE! (He did not) YES I KIDNAPPED AND MURDERED MY BROTHER (he did not) btw…Elena…would you like to spend an eternity with me…I like your hair today

[deepspaceclawstation]

If I had a nickel for every time someone invalidated a part of my identity before coming out to me, I'd have two nickels etc etc

[gillipopmoji-archived]

Do it. Say "ily" to the people you care about. Trust me, do it anyway.

thank you. i do. i do it all the time.

[ali-vault]

I promise this made sense when I sent it

@yeeteddemigod

[arolesbianism]

Stares at the sekai writers with my big wet brown eyes. Pls don't forget abt how Kanade hid the fact that she met with Mafuyu's mom from them and that Mafuyu knows abt that now

[youryurigoddess]

So one thing led to another, and I’ve just paid a visit to the first (that we know of) confirmed Good Omens S3 filming locations. Due to the obvious sensitivity of this material, please tag it accordingly and share only with the fans consenting to know potential spoilers.

A fellow Good Omens fan has mentioned that residents of a certain Edinburgh area had unexpected guests recently, knocking on their door and telling them they are filming in their street soon. Imagine their surprise when a polite question about the details led to the offhand answer: “IT'S ONLY GOOD OMENS”.

For those unaware, the City of Edinburgh Council has been working really hard on promoting the city for film and TV industry for a few years now (the effects of which we saw in S2), and has a set of very clear and very publicly available guidelines regarding the modus operandi here.

The Good Omens production has both large scale and a high impact on a specific location due to the crew size, amount of technology used, and requirement for crowd control in most of the exterior and interior scenes (e.g., bookshop, pub, or coffee shop windows), which is why not only the local authorities, but also residents were informed about the filming with an at least 8 days notice:

Ironically, I just had happened to have a trip here planned and a hotel booked within walking distance to the locations on the attached TM and parking plan map, so it would be a waste not to use this opportunity for the greater good of the fandom. Can’t stay long enough to see the actual crew, so unfortunately the hair photos will have to be made by someone else. Disappointing, I know. But there’s still a lot to be excited about!

According to the provided notice, the filming will happen within one working day with the required set-up planned for the day before, mostly in the afternoon hours. The attached map shows planned parking suspension and SYL dispensation on two streets close to the chosen locations, which is where the trailers and equipment vehicles will park:

Location One turns out to be, rather surprisingly, a cosy corner bookshop. The shop — one of the Edinburgh’s oldest surviving secondhand bookstores — is very small, but crammed with a wide ranging library of beautiful books to serve readers and collectors, including antiquarian true first editions and signed copies.

It’s giving Muriel’s sweet and whimsical charm, but the bits and pieces of the unpublished Good Omens sequel point out not towards Whickber Street, where the angel currently resides, but more towards a new in-universe location. Maybe one that will be opened in the future post-Second Coming, maybe one that will remind one of the characters about a home base of operations back in the heart of London’s Soho (and theirs— wait, who said that?).

Notice that the road closure includes north and south sides of the pavement visible in the last photo, so both indoor and outdoor shots could be expected:

Location Two seems a bit more complex, since it’s basically a skewed triangle consisting of one longer street and a short side street diverging from it. Conveniently for the filmmakers, the architecture here is uncharacteristic enough that it could be easily presented as British, Scottish, or even American. I’m personally a bit partial to the last option since it would make sense story- and budget-wise, especially now with the two people previously adamant on shooting the US scenes only on location there not on the production team anymore.

The contrasting structures and materials visible here easily offer background for multiple potential contexts and scenarios, so much in fact that it’s easy to imagine more than one scene being shot here for cost- and time-effective reasons. Some of the buildings along the cobbled road have the right look and feel for historical flashbacks, as you can see below. I find the two separate entrances next to each other particularly lovely:

A considerable part of the buildings in the area, however, belongs to a more modern complex that communicates a very different personality and function. With a bit of camera and post-production magic, it could transform to a wide range of settings — please let me know your thoughts and ideas if you have any!

Specific filming times and more detailed information are consciously not shared out of concern for the crew and cast members who clearly don’t want them to become public knowledge. Those of you who live in the area and might visit the set anyway, please don’t forget to make sure that your presence won’t bother them as well as other locals. And remember to keep any new photos and information contained with tags so that you won’t spoil it to the people who would rather wait for the movie itself!

[luminiares]

ngl as much as i would have loved s&b to be more book accurate, that would have meant less crows at this point in the story so i’m happy with what we got due to the interactions. continuity wise, though. i have so many questions.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Leftist antisemitism is a symptom - American Jews and the Illiberal Left

TLDR: I think we would be wise to stop regarding leftist antisemitism only in its own context and habitually recognize it is a part of a larger issue, the rise of the illiberal left.

Why are Jews are the most reliable supporters of Liberal policies and politicians in modern American history?

Haviv Rettig Gur seems to suggest that Jews in the US, recognizing that Liberal values resulted in their (imperfect but historic) emancipation in the US, became perhaps the most Liberal people ever. They understood that US Liberal values were what made Jews relatively safe in the US, and offered them opportunities which had been denied to them everywhere else.

When previously did a head of state speak to Jews the way George Washington did?

Gur suggests that this is why American Jews have historically been so invested in the struggle of black folks in the US. When I say invested, I'm talking about facts like these:

- Henry Moscowitz was one of the founders of the NAACP.

- Kivie Kaplan, a vice-chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called the Union for Reform Judaism), served as the national president of the NAACP from 1966 to 1975.

- From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges (including Howard, Dillard and Fisk universities) were established in whole or in part by contributions from Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. At the height of the so-called "Rosenwald schools," nearly 40 percent of Black people in the south were educated at one of these institutions.

- Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.

- Leaders of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations.

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.

- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, under the aegis of the Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's building.

When I was a child and asked my mother why Jews seemed overwhelmingly to be Democrats, I was told "because of FDR and the Civil Rights movement." That's not wrong, in Gur's framing, but perhaps a more shallow response than the question deserves.

In Gur's framing, US Jews realized that the promises of Liberalism, over and over, no matter how much they delivered for other peoples, did not deliver for black Americans.

Gur suggests that US Jews worked to see that change for their black co-citizens because if American Liberalism didn't deliver for black Americans what it appeared to promise to all Americans, the sense of safety, security, and belonging which Jews felt in the US was an illusion.

US Jews believed that we had common cause with non-Jewish American Liberals. We thought non-Jewish liberals believed what we believed about universal civil rights, pluralism, enlightenment values and enlightenment reason. When Jews saw the "In this House We Believe" signs on our neighbors' lawns, We felt comforted because those beliefs are also our beliefs.

We thought, for instance, that our non-Jewish friends agreed that Liberal democracies were better for human rights than any form of government in the history of human societies. We thought they agreed that religious, racial, and ethnic intolerance were social ills which needed to be fought with information. We thought they valued data, reason, and reliable sources.

Since 10/7/23, we've been learning that we were mistaken. We've seen gentiles who we thought shared our values seem to discard those values.

We saw college educated friends share antisemitic (and alarmingly familiar) conspiracy theories about Israeli puppetry of US politics and the return of Nazi and Soviet antisemitic slogans/images.

We've seen highly educated "Liberals" preach ahistoric nonsense denying that the Jewish people are from the Levant and willfully ignoring the huge swaths of historical fact which don't support their favored narrative.

We've seen friends rage against "globalists" and "Zionists," when what they mean is 'Jews'.

We've seen people who we thought were allies against all forms of racism justify their racism towards Jews as righteous through specious reasoning like 'I don't hate Jews, just the 97% of Jews who believe that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland.'

We've been told that we cannot ask them to temper their use of antisemitic tropes, because doing so "weaponizes" concerns about antisemitism to obstruct them from their righteous crusade against the most evil nation on earth...which happens to be the only Jewish nation.

Despite this, about 80% of Jewish voters voted for Harris over Trump.

I think US Jews will continue to be Liberals, because Liberal values are dear to us and aligned with our values as Jews, as a historically oppressed minority, and as Americans who see more clearly than some others the gap between the promise of American liberalism and its long-delayed universal delivery.

The problem, I think, is in how many of our former friends simply aren't Liberals any longer.

I think Jews in the US need to spend a good deal more time scrutinizing the illiberal left.

Nine days after the attacks of 10/7/23, Jonathan Chait wrote:

Writers like Michelle Goldberg, Julia Ioffe, and my colleague Eric Levitz, all of whom rank among the writers I most admire, have written anguished columns about the alienation of Jewish progressives from the far left. I think all their points are totally correct. But I find the frame of their response too narrow. They are treating apologias for Hamas as a factually or logically flawed application of left-wing ideals. I believe, to the contrary, that Hamas defenders are applying their own principles correctly. The problem is the principles themselves.

...

Liberals believe political rights are universal. Basic principles like democracy, free speech, and human rights apply equally to all people, without regard to the content of their political values. (This of course very much includes Palestinians, who deserve the same rights as Jews or any other people, and whose humanity is habitually ignored by Israeli conservatives and their American allies.) A liberal would abhor the use of political violence or repression, however evil the targets.

...

The illiberal left believes treating everybody equally, when the power is so unequal, merely serves to maintain existing structures of power. It follows from their critique that the legitimacy of a tactic can only be assessed with reference to whether it is being used by the oppressor or the oppressed. Is it okay for, say, a mob of protesters to shout down a lecture? Liberals would say no. Illiberal leftists would need to know who was the speaker and who was the mob before they could answer.

...

One observation I’ve shared with many analysts well to my left is that the debate over this illiberalism and the social norms it has spawned — demands for deference in the name of allyship, describing opposing ideas as a form of harm, and so on — has tracked an older debate within the left over communism. Communism provided real-world evidence of how an ideology that denies political rights to anybody deemed to be the oppressor laid the theoretical groundwork for repression and murder.

There have been conscious echoes of this old divide in the current dispute over Hamas. The left-wing historian Gabriel Winant has a column in Dissent urging progressives not to mourn dead Israeli civilians because that sentiment will be used to advance the Zionist project. Winant sounds eerily like an old communist fellow traveler explaining that the murders of the kulaks or the Hungarian nationalists are the necessary price of defending the revolution. “The impulse, repeatedly called ‘humane’ over the past week, to find peace by acknowledging equally the losses on all sides rests on a fantasy that mourning can be depoliticized,” he argues, calling such soft-minded sentiment “a new Red Scare.” Making the perfect omelette always requires some broken eggs in the form of innocent people who made the historical error of belonging to, or perhaps being born into, an enemy class.

But more than three decades have passed since the Soviet Union existed or China’s government was recognizably Marxist. And so the liberal warning about the threat of left-wing illiberalism seemed abstract and bloodless. On October 7, it suddenly became bloody and concrete. It didn’t happen here, of course. The shock of it was that many leftists revealed just how far they would be willing to follow their principles. “People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you ‘cannot tell Palestinians how to resist,’” notes (without contradicting the sentiment) Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Jewish Currents. Concepts like this, treating the self-appointed representative of any oppressed group as beyond criticism, are banal on the left. Yet for some progressive Jews, it is shocking to see it extended to the slaughter of babies, even though that is its logical endpoint. The radical rhetoric of decolonization, with its glaring absence of any limiting principles, was not just a rhetorical cover to bully some hapless school administrator into changing the curriculum. Phrases like “by any means necessary” were not just figures of speech. Any means included any means, very much including murder.

Both Julia Ioffe and Eric Levitz have pointed out that decolonization logic ignores the fact that half of Israel’s Jewish population does not have European origins and came to Israel after suffering the same ethnic cleansing as the Palestinians. This is correct. But what if it weren’t? If every Israeli Jew descended from Ashkenazi stock, would it be okay to shoot their babies?

The problem is much greater than leftist antisemitism. The illiberal left has become nearly as great a threat to Liberalism as the far right.

It is often the case that a movement’s treatment of Jews serves as a broader indicator of its health. It’s not an accident that the Republican Party has become more attractive to antisemites as it has grown more paranoid and authoritarian. What the far left revealed about its disposition toward Jews is not just a warning for the Jews but a warning for all progressives who care about democracy and humanity. The pro-Hamas left is not merely indicating an indifference toward Jews. It is revealing the illiberal left’s inherent cruelty, repression, and inhumanity.

I'm annoyed that it is has taken me so long to catch on and alarmed by the implications.

I am, however, very proud of my 14yo, who sums up her experience trying to respectfully disagree with leftists this way:

"They're allergic to nuance."

[kozachenko]

Finally decided to play around with my old lineless style again! Also figured out a way to draw Reimu that I actually really like!

Artist's Notes;

I've mentioned in a few earlier posts that I've been wanting to draw in my lineless style again for a while as a way to test what I've learnt from my previous style in regards to lighting. I did the face first and then for a while was thinking about doing a full body illustration of Reimu just to draw her outfit again. I'll talk about the face first since that's the first drawing I did in this batch.

For the longest time I really couldn't find a way to translate Reimu's face into my style. I was able to make her clothes work out well, just not really her face. I did like elements of how I drew her face a few other times, namely the tiny eyebrows and her pupils, but they didn't really feel like Reimu to me, or at least how I imagined her in my head. I then realized that it was less of a problem with the entire face and moreso the eyes, and it took me quite a bit of trial and error to make something that I was happy with. Also, as much as I thought the tiny eyebrows were cute, it didn't really make sense with her character. Like, from what I know about Japanese history, plucking your eyebrows was something that nobles (rich people) would do, and since Reimu is...neither of those things, I decided to just give her some thicker eyebrows instead (I will be saving the plucked eyebrows for another character though, so they will return). After I got to a face I was happy with, my next challenge was the hair. I did the front part first and liked that enough to continue, and then after more trial and error I realized that deep down I was a short-hair-Reimu-is-best-Reimu-truther this whole time because once I gave up on the long hair and gave her shorter hair something just clicked in my brain. And so, after drawing her outfit in again (this time without the yellow tie which is kinda sad but I'll find a way to incorperate it into future designs because it just was not making sense to me in context with the rest of the outfit) and finnicking around with the bow, I came to a version of Reimu's face that I actually liked. I thought that it made more sense for her character to have her cut it short, mainly because she's doing a bunch of Youkai extermination and she has to keep her hair out of her face somehow. I still wanted to make it kinda messy though, as Reimu is probably too lazy to clean it up herself. I think another reason I like it so much is because in Forbidden Scrollery, Moe Harukawa gave Reimu short hair and that really suited her, so I guess that was just a subconcious reason as to why I liked it so much. I also think that the shorter hair helps to separate her a lot from Marisa, as I think Marisa looks really good with longer hair. Speaking of, now I wanna do a drawing of her and Reimu together to really solidify how I draw them (unlike the previous version where it was just them standing). As much as I do like the face, I am concerned if she looks too much like how I drew Keiki now, but that might just be a product of the stylistic choices I made with her eyes and I might just be overthinking it. I am hyperaware of same face syndrome so that's probably the reason I'm so concerned about it lol.

Now for the fully body drawing. I was struggling to think of a good pose for her, so I just took a picture of myself and used that as a reference while still making slight adjustments for readability's sake. This is another case of, "I've looked at this too long and can spot every single issue with it" but this time I'm still happy with the final product mainly because this was a test drive for how I want to develop my lineless style in the future and for what it is I am more than pleased with the result. The main reason I deviated away from my lineless style was mainly because I was having a hard time with the lighting and making it interesting, and I am so glad that I've finally found a way to make it work! I'm especially happy with the clothes, as I think clothing folds are really fun to draw. I was somewhat inspired by the works of J.C. Lyendecker and the way he draws clothes, though admittedly it is not a one to one, since I mainly wanted to try implying the shading of the clothing folds with shapes (I do really want to do a study of his style one day as his art is incredible). So for the sleeves, I drew in a bunch of triangles where I wanted there to be a strong highlight, roughly coloured in the inside, and then blended them all so it looks like a more subtle. On both of these drawings, I also added in a noise filter to give it some texture (as that's what I used to often do with my drawings) and while I do like it, I might want to experiment with making it more subtle in the future, as it's pretty noticeable in both these drawings. Overall, I'm really happy with the lighting and colours of this drawing, and while I could nitpick several aspects of it (her hand holding the gohei looks too tense, I tried making her look like she was standing on the balls of her feet but the positioning of her Gohei's trail of papers ends up making it look weird, and I could've put more effort into the hair and bow and so many more things), this is more of a piece for me to experiment with my style again, and I'm excited for when I get a new idea for a piece, as I really wanna try some more stuff out with this style!