#managed capacity

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Learning to celebrate the little wins!

[valtsv]

this part of VAL's monologue about how she was created keeps coming back to me, because while it isn't the only time that we see her being capable of empathy or sympathy, and of recognising other people as victims of the same cruelty and violence that she herself was (as we hear when she talks about the civilians killed at dutler's weald), it is the one time that she doesn't try to separate herself from them entirely, as though that will protect her from being made the same - helpless, and suffering at the whims of others. perhaps because she sees the person she was before she was hallowed as a separate entity already - the one who made the decision that damned them both - but perhaps also because they are her, or what she could have been, and she them. i can't help but wonder how many nights she spent telling herself that the doors to the cells in that substation would miraculously unlock, and they would all walk free. that the cellmate whose screams kept her awake would take to the latest hallowing brands, or at least stop being in so much pain. that her mother would come back, and her hands would be soft. that someone would apologise for what they were doing to her. to all of them. i wonder how many lies she whispered into the dark before she stopped believing them. perhaps it was when she realised that hers was the only voice left calling out into the silence.

[dyrpyn]

This election isn't looking great now.

BUT.

There is one thing you must ALWAYS. ALWAYS REMEMBER.

Your two greatest, most powerful weapons against evil, against bigotry and fascism, against hate, against even hate that comes from inside the self...

are Hope, and Spite.

If nothing else can fuel you, let these. Embrace these. Let these consume you, let them become all that you are.

Let Hope help you find light in the little details, silver linings to cling onto with bleeding hands and pockets of joy to admire in every day. Let it inject you with good faith, motivation to spread kindness where it is needed most, and deepening trust that this won't last forever.

Let Spite charge you with fury that carries you to make moves and take actions. Let it lead you to little victories right in the face of evil. Let it fuel you to do the strongest, most meaningful thing you can possibly do in this potential age: Thrive.

With enough reframing of perspectives and looking in the right places, even the most oppressed can find little ways to thrive in their personal communities, to find joy in every day. To forget how bad things are for even a second. To believe and see proof that they can change it all. To cling onto their Hope and Spite.

And THAT is the most powerful message you can send to those who wish to eradicate you.

We are the cockroaches who survive the radiation. We are the banged-up sewer rats who get in countless scuffles and still come crawling out of the tunnels covered in wounds to see the sunrise. For it rises every day no matter what may be brewing underneath its shine.

And we will watch every sunrise together. We will hold hands and sing in our defiance. We will always remain connected through our shared suffering and yet especially our shared Strength.

And with our weapons kept at our sides, we will all make it.

[vaguely-concerned]

the melancholy edge it must have for lucanis romancing rook especially to see the end of the murder of crows quest before they know for sure lucanis will be staying with them tho. the 'so happy for him that neither his cousin nor his grandmother is irretrievably lost to him (*cough* no matter what I might think of them personally *cough*) and also that it all ended about as well as there was any sane reason to hope for even though he's saddled with this awful job he doesn't want now! incidentally my heart feels like it's being crushed under the immense pressure haunting the deepest abysses of the ocean floor at the idea of not seeing him every day anymore but we're not going to be talking about that right now'

[soullesstomatoes]

i offer you this chibi jerejean in these trying times

[mist-dancing]

Cool and interesting places I would live to see a warriors story take place:

- Old abandoned amusement park, eveyrthing’s overgrown in vines and surrounded by trees, but the ferrish wheel is still in tact, and the kids roller coaster cars are turned to the sides and used as small dens.

- Abandoned zoo, maybe there are still some animals left, but the cats have moved in and live in the cafe’s and gift stores. They hunt in the old enclosures and make accesories out of the odd looking giant prey bones everywhere. They avoid that one starved tiger on the other side of the zoo.

- A school, the ones where the classrooms are all separate buildings. Some cats live in the library, some cats have made classrooms into camps. They hunt at the old cafeteria that’s full of rats and mice, and they chase birds that nest in the roof.

- Crashed airplane cabin in the middle of the forest. The leaders den is the cockpit, the warriors sleep in the storage cabinets above the seats. There’s plenty soft nesting in the big hyde boxes at the back.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Milchick goes on an Epigrammatic Cruise Excursion. [Patreon | Commissions]

[freetreasures]

thursday approaches… i need them to give us something to cling to for 3 months

[legislacerator]

nothing feels better than defending the 19 y/o i heard the property manager screaming at by telling him that they can’t evict him until they give him proper notice. remember kids just because they don’t like you doesn’t mean they can just kick you out!!!! property management companies and landlords say shit like “you’re going to get evicted” over anything they don’t like just to scare people in their late teens/early 20s, since most of them don’t know their rights as tenants and have maybe never lived away from home before. don’t let them fool you!! property management companies have to follow the rules whether they like it or not

[insteading]

As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine

I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").

But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.

In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.

Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)

People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.

Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.

And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).

I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.

Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.

[sorchasolas]

kaladin vs kelsier?

Kelsier gets squashed like a bug because Kaladin’s 6’10 next question

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show.

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[bookwyrminspiration]

chat should I do the 50k words in a month this november, as per usual, or since we're ditching the site due to shitty management should I break free of the ill-timing and do the challenge in like. june.

[muninnhuginn]

Thinking about "your weakness is how you always want to be the hero" and how the series returns to this at the end

Li Lianhua hated how he acted as Li Xiangyi and spent years trying to distance himself from it, but ultimately he still fell back into the similar patterns, for all his added experience

His main priority was always to "do the right thing" regardless of how that would impact on those around him. And it *did* impact those around him. From Qiao Wanmian and Shan Gudao as Li Xiangyi to Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng as Li Lianhua

Giving the Styx flower to the emperor so he could use it as leverage to guarantee Fang Duobing and his family's safety. Using the last of his power to save Yun Biqiu. Constantly putting others above himself whilst actively refusing to recognise that his self-sacrificial nature would hurt those he cared about most

And sure, he thinks he's going to die anyway. They're going to be hurt regardless and he can't do anything about that. His odds are low of the Styx flower even working. But ultimately, he refuses to even consider trying. Li Xiangyi has been dead a long time and Li Lianhua is just there to tide things over. What value is the life of a ghost

To the end, he lives and dies a hero. To the end, he refuses to live for himself.

[milkweedman]

Made another spindle. It's very small. Also very irregular and lumpy due to the wood (I wanted the raised brown lines to stay and erred on the side of caution in how much I cut away...but that did lead to a very irregular spindle).

It also wanted to crumble as I carved, so pretty much all the fine tuning I just did by sanding it, which helps to compress the fibers down as well as remove material without crumbling or splintering.

It really came to life when I oiled it. Probably will be best after a few good coats and some time. My woodburning kit seems to be totally gone, which is a bummer. So I'm not woodburning anymore.

Spins well. Obviously being so tiny and light it was always going to be a fine spinning spindle, but effortless thread from an unprepped piece of fleece is pretty indicative as well. I seem to find myself carving mostly thread spindles at the moment. They're always so small and light in the hand, they remind me of holding baby birds.

[ducktracy]

i've been in a very "nostalgic for SpongeBob" mood lately and that's warranted a lot of reflecting on Baby Me being a Sponge fanatic and thinking of what she'd think of now. and i have to say that one of my favorite parts of doing what i do--and also the most stupidly niche--is that one of my first online hyperfixations i recall having was SpongeBob production music. i remember animating magical girl transformations in Flipnote to SPONGEBOB MUSIC. i remember feeling so smart researching all the songs and getting to hear them without any dialogue on top. very gratifying to 11 year old me. i was and am still very fixated on production music, and so i always get very excited when seeing uploads of these songs and spotting a screenshot of a scene i worked on among them. one of my favorite aspects of watching episodes premiere is seeing what music they added on top of scenes i touched. it's just neat how many facets my thankfulness for Doing What I'm Doing gets to reach. i'm never not thinking of how grateful i am to be doing what i'm doing