#might be easier to engage with

[crowshoots]

hrmmmm thinkin thoughts (reimagining jesper in a main verse removed from the grishaverse)

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[vimbry-moved]

"likes don't do anything" they do

"there's no algorithm" there is

"well nobody uses the for you tab" I do

"reblog all art and fics you see" there's no thought put into that. if this does work on people, then it's just pity engagement borne out of guilt rather than genuine interest, which is arguably worse than having none, because it's totally hollow.

[leonardalphachurch]

there are a lot of stories i want to write but they take a lot of effort and so they’re really hard and then others stories that would take less effort but i also want to write them way less and so they’re also really hard and all that to say i am considering if i should make some of those latter stories into visual novel…

[storytellering]

Hello (:

I just read your comment on some recent shipping war post and wanted to thank you for putting it into words so well. I've scratched the surface of that fandom recently but I don't think I will delve any deeper for this exact reason. Maybe I'm too old for this, but trying to hurt real people over fictional characters just seems unnecessary. I don't think there is any need to try to justify what I like (or anyone else likes) to anyone.

Well, coming here to shake your hand and say thank you, I saw your amazing art and spent a long time just scrolling. Wow! I am absolutely in love! Keep up the wonderful work. <3

Aah, thank you so much, and I'm glad my words resonated with you, anon!! I absolutely get the hesitation at getting actively involved in fandom communities nowadays given the wider sentiments, largely of younger kids that seem to be shaping up the current landscape. It shouldn't be that way, fandom should be just a place to have fun with like minded people, but unfortunately vitriol is very easy to find in today's internet. That said, don't let that keep you from lurking! Just block any asshole that sours the mood and keep doing you, and enjoying whatever it is you like.

[wulfhalls]

microdosing on killing myself by reading eruri fic exclusively for three days straight

[alienaiver]

not me realizing what caused my flare up and why it hasnt gotten better 😭😭

[linktube]

if its produced well sword af season 2 can be fun as an audio drama?? there was a surge of scripted podcasts being made at some point so i imagine it could be like that

[homophyte]

there is a rapidly evolving rhetoric against transgender cowardice that is deeply shaming nd it worries me a lot

[hellsbeenbettersincehesplit]

ngl i wrote like half of this one oneshot i have coming up and im still really excited about it but the motivation just disappeared overnight :( like i shit you not it's half written but to connect it i feel like ill have to make all these revisions and its just like. i want to but the adhd says no.

[divinekangaroo]

During my ~12 yr fandom hiatus I nearly posted a Sylvie (Loki) fanfic on how a child with an extended childhood and adolescence (assuming Asgard years) repeatedly selected families/groups with which to ‘grow up with’ knowing they would all die in apocalypse…falling in love, first sexual experience, best friends forever, sibling connections, loving mth & fth, going back and living w the same family again in a bittersweet remembrance and trying harder (maybe she fought w them last time around), a pseudo-selfishly driven, grief stricken ‘stuck in a time loop’ by design because she can never see them otherwise

Doing it again and again w different families, seeing different fathers and brothers and putting Odin and Thor into a perspective and context that Loki-Loki never could

this constant temptation to save them, being Loki (ragnarok) after all, this ability to do something about apocalypse

and not doing it. Letting them be destroyed because to do anything wouldn’t save them and it’d only destroy herself too and she can always go back again and grow up with them again, if she misses them

And having to take this pragmatic route again and again and again until the mind and heart really fractures

[butwhatifidothis]

lookin’ around the Engage scene juuust a bit and hmmm. it appears i am an outlier in benching Chloe... whoops

[aphroditestummyrolls]

JFK terminal 5 is the weirdest place where I’ve ever been hit with The Yearning™️. 0/10, no stars.

[twilighthiro]

wait

if Emblems are made of divine energy

and it took Lumera 1000 years + her life to give Alear half of her divine power

then how many divine dragons did each Emblem cost?

[dark-side-blog3]

La squadra Childhood friends au pt 5

These songs are what inspired the au https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHHyi9Wdts and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyE9x5HETkY

Everything has changed: It's most of their childhood, how happy la squadra was back then with Darling in their life cause they made an effort to be with them, then it leads up to the present. Though held captive, they're happy to see them hitmen team

The Joker and the Queen: Darling begins to succumb to them, it's a slow process but they begin to return their feelings.

Blep cat

I can see the darling listening to while they sit on the couch and look out the window, the base briefly empty from the other nine inhabitants, and they imagine how the lyrics reflect their relationships with all their friends. Disregarding the fact that it's a relationship they can't leave if they want to. That doesn't fit the romantic aspect. So darling shoves it away, and listens to a playlist to sink into a mindset where they're happy with this.

It's cute, in the same way, that it's tragic; the reader has lost the will to fight.

[dukeofankh]

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.