#or we can do this the hard way

[mossplot]

Guys, PRETTY PLEEEEEEASE send me asks. I’ll kiss ya😼😼

[soldrawss]

Part 2 finally! Part 3 to come soonish,,,

You can find part 1 here!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Get Their Ass.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[seventh-district]

Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 4 - Nuthin' but Boothill Edition

[Pt. 1] [Pt. 2] [Pt. 3] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]

[lizzybeeee]

DATV explaining the 'Regret Prison'

A REGRET PRISON IS STUPID AND I'M TIRED OF PRETENDING THAT ITS NOT

TL;DR: a prison can serve as a metaphor but it shouldn't be entirely comprised of a metaphor.

From what I understood from what the game gave us: Solas has made a new prison to move the God's too - since bringing down the veil would free them from the Black City. This new prison is separate(?) from the fade or so far removed/contained that bringing down the veil would not compromise it...apparently. We interrupt his ritual, Solas gets sucked into the new prison he made, and the elven gods are free.

When Rook gets kicked into the fade they're physically there - which means it's a physical place in the fade, like how it was a mixture of physical/thought when we entered it in DAI. Which makes sense - the gods are real and living beings, they need to be in a place, there must be some aspect of physicality to it.

Alright, cool, it's a Black City 2.0 - I assume it's better defended to prevent people breaking in/out again?

NOPE.

We get there and it's a 'regret prison'?? It's tied to the regrets of those within it? Composed of regrets??? Solas had to wait for the right moment for Rook to be sufficiently 'full of regret' that they could switch places?

So is the prison tied to Solas's regrets? If so, how can Rook escape? The prison seems to work around the idea that it relies on the regrets of the person it's holding to work - which is how/why Rook was able to be trapped and later free themselves (along with whatever remains of the team apparently being able to do something on their end, not that we hear about it).

WHICH IS STUPID!

Are you telling me the prison intended to hold to megalomaniac elven gods was going to imprison them based on their own regrets? Is Solas assuming that Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain are as self-pitying as he is? They'd break out quicker than Rook did! He made a time out corner for the elven gods to sit in and gave them an out if they reflected on their emotions/regrets or decided that they don't regret what they did. Elgar'nan, a spirit of tyranny, is not going to 'regret' his actions - he is going to justify them by telling himself and others that he knows what's best.

We can come across some of Solas's regrets in the prison if you run around a bit and explore:

Remnant of Failure - talking about the orb from Inquisition.

Remnant of Parting - talking about Mythal

Remnant of Reflection - more vague, talking about the Titans I believe.

So maybe he altered it - maybe he intended the prison to be 'locked' with his own regrets because after a millennia of having a pity party he still can't bring himself to self-reflect and look to the future. But what if Solas died? Or if his guilt lessened - would it diminish the strength of the regret prison?

We already have pre-established lore (though DATV has shown they don't really give a crap tbh) that once the being that has claimed/altered an area of the fade is slain, it's influence diminishes both in and outside of the fade. So if the prison was tied to his regrets then it would require Solas to basically live forever to keep it stable - especially if he brought down the veil and removed the one barrier that kept the world and the fade apart.

Rook and Solas needed some assistance to exit - but it doesn't seem like it was much! Solas used his dagger and Rook just...got out through a fade tear? This is Solas's 'more secure' second prison? It has a worse track record than the Black City! If Rook - who is not an elven god - managed to escape the regret prison what is to stop anyone else from breaking in and out of the prison?

And what did Solas intend to do with the blight - the bulk of which is apparently in the black city?? If bringing down the Veil would free the gods in the black city doesn't that mean that the blight would also be released?! Did he have a plan? Why does he go fully ahead with bringing down the veil at the end if the black city is still there and filled with blight?!

I get it: the 'regret prison' is a metaphor for how Solas holds onto the past and how Rook can move past their regrets and grow. He's trapped by the past - it's a prison. Cool. But this prison is supposed to by a physical place to contain the gods - not just to solely contain Solas. The mission is literally called 'A Cage for Gods'.

The Black City is an actual place that's so far out of reach of anywhere else in the fade that no mage can ever reach it while in dreams - let alone physically, which was only done once and took tremendous effort/blood sacrifices. It made sense - it was cool to see floating in the sky in DAO!

Though it's not said specifically, it's strongly implied that Arlathan is the Black City. You can see in the concept art that floating elven city is exactly the same as the black city in DAO! It's this foreboding thing just lurking in the sky - a constant reminder of the sin that led to the horrors of the blights and darkspawn. A real place with lore and history that also serves as a metaphor for the hubris and destruction of those who call themselves gods and act as tyrants -> for both the evanuris and the magisters.

I WANT TO UNDERSTAND THIS BIOWARE!

WHAT IS THIS KINGDOM HEARTS NONSENSE???!!

[randomalistic]

Wait you guys are actually buying Disney products I thought it was a joke

(READ TAGS FOR FULL CONTEXT Sorry it’s long dies

[naamahdarling]

You know what? You know what I think?

I think that if we lived as we were meant to, in larger intimate ("extended family") groups and with more shared labor and time to do it (UBI NOW) people like me would not feel so useless and burdensome because there would be people around to help and to do what neurodivergent people can't while making valuable space for the neurodivergent to do what they ARE good at.

The way we live right now, all right, the way we live right now forces units of two adults to be able to do EVERYTHING or PAY to have someone come do it for them. I have to do the housework. I have to do it! But I am having to do a million different things and most of them I am not good at. I suck at them.

I wouldn't feel like shit, okay, if I had more than one other person around who was not a child and who could do the things I can't, like do the yard and cook and do repairs and basic maintenance; and someone else to split everything else that I like but is too much for me. It would free me to do what I am good at and enjoy. Cleaning, as in the sink and toilet, the windows, the blinds. Taking out trash. Folding, hanging, and sorting laundry.

But because all the shit I can do often relies on other shit being done first, and I can't do or have trouble doing those things, the shit I can do often can't be done. And even the shit I can do, I can't do ALL of it. So I can't keep up, and things get very bad.

We aren't meant to live like this. We are not meant to live like this.

That thought hurts so much because being able to flee the birth family is integral to survival for so many people. I'm so afraid that living in larger family groups would create more opportunities for, say, queer kids to be isolated, rejected, bullied, and abused. But if we gave people enough money to survive, and stopped considering children the property of their parents with no system in place to help them escape bad situations except a system that is often just as bad, just different.

I'm aware that communes and collectives aren't all that successful and are kind of a joke. I don't mean that. I mean a fundamental shift to multigenerational families where taking in "strays" (which my family did) is also normalized so people escaping abuse into existing households was accepted, with these families centered in maybe a couple of different larger residences so not everyone has to buy and maintain their own fucking washing machine and vacuum cleaner, and so people can benefit from large group meals that yield leftovers, and so child and elder care can also be centralized.

Then disabled people and the neurodivergent and sick and injured people, and pregnant people, and grieving people, would not have to either labor through all those stressors or consign themselves to living off an unlivable pittance or being put under legal guardianship.

I'm not saying anything new. People live like this in other parts of the world and maybe it sucks and I am wrong. But I'm just really mad right now because I can either do laundry or clean the sink but not both, and I really think we could improve society somewhat by making it so I did not have to choose one without sacrificing the other.

[ganondoodle]

(OC Lore and design time!)

(it got longer again ... sorry ... idk how to make things short, i just need to talk, but i guess if you can read the written stuff in the pic thats the barest bare bones of what i wrote here)

i was asked what new lore story stuff i had thought about that made me sad which i mentioned a bit ago, and while that is too hard to explain given all the missing context i thought i could at least talk about lore having to do with it :D

so, (Lord) Eadrya is one of my fav OCs (big blue lad, here a rough sketch in humanoid form) they are both one of if not THE most powerful demon alive and the most battle trained;

at the mid point of the story the demon world gets invaded by the celestials (the angel inspired things i talked about in the previous lore post with Xaror) and Shargon, as the king, should be their first and only frontline, but at this point his life is only being sustained by maschinery after being mortally wounded, he cannot fight (he realizes what is going on, rips himself off the maschinery to get at least his youngest child to safety, barely managing it before dying- the guardian, the demons god, takes over his body to attempt to fight against the celestials but cant keep itself alive long enough since its host is already dead) Eadrya takes the role of the frontline fighter (despite being very full of themselves and aggressive they care about their 'job' of protecting their own, also giving them the chance to show off just how strong they are); the fight was going well for them all things considered, but when the guardian activates it drains the power of all elemental lords (which Eadrya is one of, and since they have the most strength it also takes the most from them), so much so that they lose the fight and suffer deadly wounds (the worst being a spear through the chest made of a material that grows hard, root-like formations when in contact with demonic blood like a fungus but worse, also stopping any self healing processes) after the guardian falls apart it creates a huge shockwave of energy that stuns every living thing within a certain distance and possibly more-

Eadrya (in true demon form, so like a blue whale in size at least) was likely taken through an active gateway to the human world in a large tidal wave also created by the guardians fall; they wash up in the harbor of a small secluded village, the head of which is 'lady 13'; although never having seen a demon before and everyone being afraid (largely thinking its a strange hurt animal, only she suspected otherwise), they still gather all villagers to pull out the celestial spear, which is diffcult and brutal given that its already taken root, but the village lacked both knowledge and means to help any other way- doing so damaged their heart which is how they were able to collect samples of all three demonic blood types ('normal' -red like humans-, energy -essentially purely magic- and heartblood -highly concentrated energy only found within the heart of a demon and the only one to contain genetic material) (this is the start of Eadryas character arc, having to deal with the fact that their world is likely destroyed, them failing what they didnt think they could fail, having lost a battle so badly (even if not really their fault) for the first time and not knowing if literally anyone else has survived .. also being now stuck in the human world, which they dont like)

Lady 13 (placeholder name? stands for experiment 13) is a human that was tricked by demon hunters to enroll into a series of experiments trying to create hybrids of demons and humans, which they hoped would be powerful and easily controllable tools for their endeavours, though the two are inherently not compatible, they tried grafting body parts of demons on humans to make them compatible- all experiments failed except for her, more or less, though she never got to see the hybrid she carried and was then told it had died too, they threw her out believing she wouldnt survive much longer either and all such experiments were cancelled due to the high cost of human life, research material (demons are still rare) and upkeep with no successful results Lady 13 survived though (perhaps even via the pirates picking her up?) and she ended up living in said small village far away, hiding her half demonic body, though most know there soemthing 'wrong' with her (her being this tall when it doesnt fit the rest for one), only few know the full extent; she enjoys the life she has now, perhaps on the more poor side but safer and more loved than ever before; she largely lead the efforts to try and help Eadrya when they ended up in the harbor, though there wasnt that much anyone could do it was still enough- they leave immediately after waking up, but return after really having nowhere to go and struggling to deal with everything that has happened; over time (probably years) they start to open up towards the people there (though not .. very much) enough to get rather close with Lady 13 too- she actually falls madly in love but after Eadrya (extremely aro/ace) rejects all her attempts quite clearly she respects their boundaries

However, after hearing news of potential demon sightings Eadrya decides to leave in hopes of not being the last demon left after all; Lady 13 then decides to reveal her secret to them (though hearing and seeing what lengths hunters would go to for their experiments makes them absolutely seething with rage- she insists on not being out for revenge) and asks if they would be willing to donate a small amount of heartblood; shes always wanted to be a mother but is now incompatible with humans too- through things she picked up back at the experiments facillity, hers and her doctors research she is sure that is all that is needed, she dares to ask since she does not know when, if ever, she will meet another demon, much less one she could actually trust enough for this though Eadrya hesitates (why would she want to go through the same thing again that didnt work and threatened her life, if it does work, do they want to be involved with any of this? what if hunters find out it worked after all?) but after her ensuring that they would have no part in it other than giving up a little blood and would not be considered a parent in any way, nor made responsible for anything that might happen to her, but considering it all in the end they agree to it

only for her to reveal shes had a small bottle of it already, along with multiple samples of the other types, which she collected when Eadrya was bleeding out into the harbor not knowing if they will survive, though not wanting to make use of it without their consent either way (they are actuallly rather touched by this)

alot later the main group returns here and it turns out to have worked (though she is unable to walk/bedridden for a long while bc it did alot of damage to her body, which can heal since its demons parts, but only really slowly bc she does not have a full functioning system and no demonic blood of her own -she uses the other samples for the healing process-) though its a little awkward to explain, especially considering that 13.1 took alot after Eadrya xD (their theory as to why it worked so "well" that time is that even though the sample was already taken, them giving their consent for it still made it less likely to be rejected; demons dont need partners to have offspring, and all can do it, they just have to decide to- so them agreeing to it, even though its long been outside their body, still had an effect on the blood sample)

[usercelestial]

okay but literally what if buck and tommy end up together? like what if we get to see them moving in together or saying i love you for the first time or getting engaged or getting married? what if we get to see buck having a husband? literally what then...

[blueskiesandstarrynights]

shout out characters who would lose their shit over realizing they're fictional characters. shout out characters who would punch their creators in the face. shout out evan kelmp. shout out conner bailey.

[inkskinned]

even 2 years ago people still said autism with a whisper. it was also how people sometimes whisper lesbian, like they're afraid of uttering a slur. autistic was either an insult or it was something terrible, a horrible burden only select people endure. "select people" were usually 9 year old boys and skinny white men.

they are not hispanic young adults with a dog and a life and friends. i can make (sustained, calculated, painful) eye contact. with certain people, i don't even have to count how many seconds i am holding their vision - i can just look at them. i can wear clothes that bother me, i will just have a worse day than usual. i might cry about any changes to my schedule - but change is scary! this is normal!

when i was 16 it was OCD. i mean that was the thing everyone said. i totally have ocd. they would arrange 6 colors of gel pen in rainbow order (no worry for indigo feeling left out) and they'd be "so ocd" about it.

if you struggle with intrusive thoughts, be careful at this next paragraph, but. at 16 i developed a compulsion that involved self-harm. my ocd was convinced i was simply forgetting that i'd hurt someone terribly - a thought that persisted for no clear or delineated reason.

at some point i will probably write about how the idea of "morally pure thoughts" was hell for me and others with ocd, but this was the odd dichotomy for many of us: they liked our "aesthetic", but were genuinely repulsed by our lived experience. "intrusive thoughts" now means "cutting your hair in the sink" instead of talking yourself down from believing horrible things. "so ocd" is a label without any true understanding.

it's something i've talked about before - in multiplicity - but i firmly believe in the veracity and necessity of self-diagnosis. i think it saves lives and it saves tragedies from occurring. as someone raised in a house that wasn't safe, self-diagnosis was, for many years, the only viable option. 15 and honestly googling: am i depressed or are there demons affecting my behavior.

but it is not genuine self-diagnosis anymore, most of the time. it is a strange, blanched version of that whispered word autism. now certain traits are constantly seen as "autistic" - any passing intense interest. any flubbed social interaction. people say it while laughing - a touch of the 'tism.

and i like the acceptance! i do. i like that people are talking about it. i like that if i self-identify, more people speak up and say me too, bitch. but there is something-else quietly happening, the way it happened to OCD. the quirky, "fun" parts have been washed and sanitized and removed of all suffering. now it is just something that makes you "a little bit silly."

it took me 27 years on this planet before i learned to make friends. something about me just seems incredibly odd, i guess, some kind of radiation monitoring. someone once (in a way that was almost friendly) told me i am doing the right things, but in a way that's off-putting. i have scoured myself raw attempting to be charming.

someone on tiktok does a deep dive into their particular passion. the top comment says "what kind of autism is this lol". like we are a breed of animal. like it has no influence on our experience. like our life is a fresh breeze, an open meadow.

more often for me, life was a drowning.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Turtle Takedown Teamwork.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

hey. hey. you there. religious jew who wants to do so well because you truly do love g-d and you see His presence everywhere and you have faith in Him and He gives you everything. yes, you. if you're not a religious jew you can read this too this just isn't geared towards you.

ok now that i have your attention read this: g-d knows you. He made your body and your soul and He understands it fully. there's gonna be some times where you can't commit to something, where you can't fulfill that mitzvah. maybe you've got an amazing new job that will pay the rent and the bills youve been struggling with for months but you need to work shabbat. maybe you cant say prayers or blessings in public bc you dont feel safe to speak hebrew outside of your own home. maybe you struggle to keep up a routine and have a hard time with daily mitzvot. whatever it is i promise Hashem does not hate you and does not see you as a failure.

i definitely understand being a perfectionist and wanting to go all out. to show that you are fully devoted and that you appreciate Him at every point in your life. also lets be real sometimes you just wanna prove to yourself that you can do all these little things and that you have the discipline to do it. or you wanna impress someone else you admire. that's completely normal and those emotions are part of what makes us human (however those can be signs of underlying mental health issues so pls talk to someone if you need!). anyway, Hashem doesnt mind that we can't do it all all the time. sometimes we can't do it all ever. He knows that something is always better than nothing. we were given the gift of life, of food, of being jewish, of the torah, of everything else by g-d and we can express our gratefulness for that in so many ways and they are all important.

g-d is not that shitty teacher you had in middle school who judged you in front of the class every time your essay wasnt an A+. He created everything and gave us the joy of life and is here to guide us through us. He made us human with all of our possible emotions because that is what we are meant to be. we are meant to be flawed and without that we wouldnt even be people anymore. you're gonna have shitty days, weeks, months, even years and He understands that and even if you can only do tiny things it still matters.

[casualavocados]

I'm not finished yet. ...[🎶!]

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 13