#shalem birthday!!!

[mai3phy]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHALEM ARKNIGHTS 🥳🔥🥳🔥🥳🥳🥳

Yippie

[potatoescanbesadtoo]

a little bit of shalem for his (late) birthday... my favourite theater snek

[zeruzerudesu]

For some reason I'm thinking it's actually easier for having Bubs on our side rather than Belial cuz at least he's not that way too obsessed and attached to someone so unhealthy that it's hard to find any reason for him joining the crew. It requires Belial to be liberated from Lucilius to have him in party

While Bubs, I think he'll have that sort of unique situation (the enemy of my enemy is my friend situation on VS being one of them) for joining us. Like who knows, maybe the reward of clearing final floor on Tower of Babyl being recruiting Beelzebub to your party

[tainbocuailnge]

its my birthday! normally i shamelessly ask for money but better give that to a real fundraiser right now, you guys can provide me with shalem arknights image instead

[mysterycubes]

shalem for lance's birthday

[space-thyme]

happy birthday shalem ^^

(and me!)

[arknights-imagines]

Mini Update 💞👍

Hiya everyone sgsugs 💕! It's Exe! I hope you're all well 🙏

I wanted to post a small update on what I have planned and such svshs 🥺

Firstly, I've started work on a new piece for the blog 🥰 I'm a little nervous as I feel a little rusty from writing, but I'll try my best as always for you guys aaa 🙏 it's for a request recently sent in for a scenario with non-alternate Executor/'Rico (I figured it was only fitting that the first thing I have up for the blog after so long is something for 'Rico 🥺), and I hope you have it out as soon as I can so I can finally have new stuff posted 😭!!

Secondly, in the meantime, please do remember my requests are always open sgsugs 🙏 I'm especially hoping for some right now, now that I'm back...! I do have much older requests that I'd possibly like to do, however I would appreciate new and fresh ones lots, especially considering all the new characters that released while I was away aaa

There are lots of characters I've wanted to write for, however never got the chance (such as Enforcer, Lumen, Shalem, and Kazemaru, Ling, Fiammetta sgsugs 🥺 there's lots I wanted to write for before I had to leave...! 😞)

While a lot of them are already long-released, I'd still like to have a chance with their characters aaa 🥺 I appreciate any requests v v much and even if I can't get to all of them, I read each one and am thankful for each one 😭💞

Lastly, my birthday is in a few days sgsugs on January 7th 🥳💞!!! I will most likely be less active on that day and the day before for celebrating 🥺 (birthdays are always big celebrations with my family and friends svhsgshs!), so please excuse me aaa!

Ofc, I will be back as usual after that time 🙏

I think that's all for now 🥺!

Thank you v much to all of you for your time, and for your patience with me 💞!!

Remember to take care of yourself and that 'Rico and myself love all of you lots sjosjj 🥰!

Please have a good day 💘!

Art is a commission by @/claradeso on Twitter!

Yours Truly,

- An Exe who hopes everyone's new year has been going well so far 🎉

[icharchivist]

Sandalphon thinks he got better and is normal about Lucifer, but then Lucifer turns around and Sandalphon can't help but stare at whoever is daring to take away Lucifer's attention from him

If Sandalphon ever slips, Danchou will bully him for reminding that he tried to destroy the world just to get Lucifer attention

And I wonder how hard Sandalphon would relapse if he ever saw Lucifer fighting, looking less soft, no less beautiful, but more fitting the title of Ultimate Weapon bestowed upon him by astrals, with Lucifer looking down at the unfortunate and so lucky enemy, who is getting such perfect view and Sandalphon just wishing he was one beneath

Unfortunately, Lucifer still can't notice sexual tension and thinks that Sandalphon is uncomfortable, seeing him in more fighting state, maybe even being reminded when he got sent to Pandemonium. Sandalphon is going insane, Belial is having time of his day, Lucio can't help, but tease and Shalem and Fediel are trying to explain this fuckery to Lucifer

And I am definitely projecting, but whatever, sounds funny

Happy birthday! 💖

Meanwhile Lu Woh is trying to deal with Lucilius, who unfortunately recovered after that trauma, but guess Ewiyar will just show him his place 💖

Sandalphon? Normal about Lucifer? oh he's in denial. he'll never be normal.

obviously we're always ready to remind him how he fucked up, that's what we're here for <3

There's definitely a bit of projecting here but it's true Lucifer would be very hot this way. It'd probably drive Sandalphon crazy just how good he looks like this and everyone is ready to make fun of him. Which is the best thing for all of us. sucks for Sandy though!

And thank you <3

aND DLKJFDKLF. yeah honestly just throw Ewiyar at them, that's what's best to do!

[kurozu501]

(read from the bottom up)

she once what? she once what!? give me the shalem lore cygames!!

[cerastes]

How does resident regular medic Shining factor into Rhodes Island's growing club of regular and normal people like Jaye

Shining is disqualified from the I'm Just A Little Guy/Gal club on virtue of her having intentionally, willingly weaponized her backstory on several occasions already.

I can see why you'd think she fits in there, what with her insistence on being a Medic instead of being a Dynasty Warriors character, but the main crux of just being a normal dude/tte is that you do NOT want to ever be put in a situation and you run away from your backstory. Jaye fills a strange, bizarro normal dude space in that he really is convinced he's a normal guy and he's not aware he's not, so he can't even weaponize his backstory even if he wanted, and Mr. Nothing and Shalem, the prime examples, cry and moan and scream and run away from their backstory until they have absolutely no choice but to weaponize it, such as Mr. Nothing being completely willing to not harm a Pincerbeast and look like a fool and maybe even get hurt in the process if it meant he didn't have to use his martial skills, and only really throwing hands for the first time when a Bitey was going to eat a girl because he's fine being a clown but he's not going to stand around and watch a child get killed, and Shalem had to be completely and utterly cornered, quite literally, in his room, before he did anything remotely close to not running from his backstory.

Shining, on the other hand, shows up, and does this

She literally just stands there and everyone goes "Oh Fuck Oh Shit" like she's fully aware that they understand The Implication Of Her Presence. She's the actual Category 10, DEFCON 1 Woman Moment. Platinum and a bunch of other assassins were going to get wild and wet in the Maria Nearl event, then Shining shows up, says "🙎" and Platinum immediately calls it off, nope, not getting butchered tonight. She's not even remotely pretending to be a just a birthday girl, she has and will continue to weaponize The Implication Of Her Presence. Absolutely everyone is aware that she's not just a normal Jane, hell, even if she DID pretend otherwise, she's still a top notch Sarkaz healer who knows secret Sarkazian healing arts, she's as far from Normal Squad as you can get. Compare and contrast with Mr. Nothing who comes across as "charlatan", Shalem who everyone just knows as Bob the Builder, and Jaye who makes tasty treats.

[gangler]

In Shalem's birthday line she says she's gonna celebrate with a bottle of yuzukosho. Seemingly implying she's gonna drink it.

But when I google Yuzukosho it seems it's not a drink, but a very spicy condiment. Shalem canonically drinks hot sauce right out of the bottle.

[princeshroob]

I have finally soloed Faahl!! Soloing Bubz is great, but Faahl is something hella different. It darn well feels like I actually accomplished something in this game.

Anyways, my water team wasn't really anything unique, just Paladin, doggo, S!Shalem, and Pos. Shalem fell to 12th labor damage, sadly (that really ramps up towards the end) and everyone else were at low HP... which for Maria Theresa, is free real estate. There are a few things I probably could've done better, like for example, I probably didn't need Long Ji for her mirror image and could've used Lucifer instead, but still, pretty effing ecstatic that I beat him!

Also this was the grid I was using. I'm probably relying too much on Wamdus spears, since I don't think I've seen many people use them for faahl, plus since I went body route, a lot of Poseidon's attacks hit the wings, so that was a lot of wasted damage overall. Damage that would've been much higher on faasan. I did come across 2 flb Dark Thrashers since my solo water clear against Bubz tho. And yes, one of them was from the birthday ticket.

[jacobsvoice]

An Enduring Rift

Amid the rising panic over the spreading coronavirus, I have retreated to the comfortable security of my study at home. Surrounded by books about Israel and Judaism, fascinating antiquities and alluring 19th century lithographs of the Holy Land (acquired during two years of residence in Jerusalem and decades of visits), I do my best to remain calm.

Several days before our local public library suddenly shut down for the duration, I borrowed We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel (2019) by Daniel Gordis, vice president and distinguished fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem. American-born and now an Israeli citizen, Gordis explores the enduring tension between the world’s two largest Jewish communities, between American universalism and Israeli particularism.

The core values between American Jews and Israel, Gordis astutely concludes, are “diametrically opposed.” This first became evident more than a century ago, after Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State appeared. Prominent Reform rabbis insisted, and endlessly reiterated, that Jews comprise a religious community, not a nation. America was their Zion. Anything less could provoke dreaded allegations of dual loyalty against Jews who desperately wanted acceptance as genuine Americans.

After World War I the emerging Zionist movement and the determination of its pioneers to return to their Biblical homeland heightened the concern of prominent American Jewish leaders. With support from the League of Nations for Palestine (on both sides of the Jordan River) as the Jewish national homeland, the already fraught relationship between Reform Jews and Zionist pioneers intensified. America, they insisted, “is our Zion.”

Nor, as Gordis documents, did the uneasiness of Reform Jews diminish over time. For the prominent (and wealthy) among them who found their organizational home in the American Jewish Committee, Zionism was intensely discomforting lest, in the eyes of Gentiles, it be seen as compromising their loyalty to the United States. No one expressed these anxieties more fervently  than New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs, a passionate Reform Jew whose newspaper offers unrelenting criticism of Israel for its perceived misdeeds.

Over time – following the Six-Day War that returned Jews to their Biblical homeland and, if briefly, sparked euphoria among American Jews – the two Jewish communities have drifted apart. Gordis understands that American universalism, in conflict with Israeli particularism, became “the new Judaism” for liberal American Jews. Their admiration for Israel faded once Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu became its elected leaders.

Perhaps the schism was inevitable, given what Gordis identifies as “the radically different purposes at the heart of each of the two countries.” The United States welcomed immigrants worldwide (most of the time) while Israel was born “to foster the recovery and renewed flourishing of the Jewish people.” For Israeli Jews this defined Zionism and expressed the purpose of Jewish statehood. But for many American Jews, Gordis astutely observes, “there is something deeply disturbing about the legal and cultural implications of a country being a specifically Jewish country.”

That may help to explain why American Jews of my parents’ generation, born to refugees from Russia, Poland and Rumania, kept their distance from Zionism and Israel, which were never discussed in our family gatherings. But my father tracked family members from Rumania who relocated to Israel, generously providing them with desperately needed financial support. I was more interested in who these strangers were, not where they lived - although Israeli postage stamps on their responsive letters of appreciation intrigued me.

Gordis suggests that Israel “desperately need[s] ongoing substantial interaction with – and learning from - American Jewish life.” And American Jews (with many exceptions, especially among the young) are more comforted than they acknowledge with Israel as their source of Jewish inspiration and, if ever needed, their place of refuge. Both Jewish communities, he understands, are vulnerable, if in different ways. American Jews confront the “challenges of assimilation.” Israelis confront, as they always have, the challenges of survival in an unstable, often hostile, neighborhood.

My own Jewish trajectory, not unlike my generation of assimilated American Jews, carried me from boyhood and young adult indifference to the Jewish state that was born on my twelfth birthday to a momentary spark of curiosity in June 1967 when television broadcasts revealed triumphant Israeli soldiers at the Western Wall.

But it took a chance encounter five years later with a former colleague who had just returned from an Israel trip for “disaffected Jewish academics” to perk my interest. I applied, my qualifications were recognized, and my life was transformed by the experience. Frequent visits followed, including two sabbatical years in Jerusalem that included teaching a seminar on American Jewish history to Tel Aviv University students who were astonished by the rejection of Jewish norms and indifference to Jewish history that was so common among American Jews.

My first trip to Israel had also included a brief visit to Hebron, whose place in Jewish history was then unknown to me. But a glimpse of the Machpelah burial site of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs at the edge of the virtually deserted Jewish Quarter sparked my curiosity. Return visits eventually included fascinating conversations with founding leaders and devoted residents of the restored Jewish community that had been decimated by rampaging Arabs during the 1929 riots. My Hebron experiences, and the research they inspired, culminated in the first English-language history of the Hebron Jewish community.

Gordis traces, explores and explains “the more central causes of the complex, fraught, love-filled, hate-filled relationship” between American Jews and Zionists” before and since the birth of Israel. The ”rift” between us that is the focus of his illuminating book was, for me, healed decades ago by my own explorations and encounters in the Biblical homeland of my people, the Jewish people.

The “stumbling” relationship that Gordis perceptively scrutinizes (and yearns to heal) may yet result in “the fracture of the Jewish people into two largely disconnected communities.” But even though I will remain in the United States my Jewish heart and soul will always reside in Israel.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel (2009) and, most recently, Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896-2106.

JNS (March 24, 2020)

[tainbocuailnge]

happy birthday, I’m on mobile so in case it doesn’t work, please imagine a crunchy jpeg of Shalem Arknights being attached to the ask

we need to crunch him more it's enrichment for him

[encounterphilippines2019]

From Madison

“Today was a pretty relaxing day as we got to spend all of it by continuing to build relationships with Encounter students, staff, and their families.

Our day started with going to the mall in Dagupan with Pastor Grant and some of the students from the ministry in Dagupan. We got to go bowling with them which was fun because we not only love spending time with them, but for some of them they have either been bowling only a few times or never so we got to show them new experiences. We all bonded over how we are not great bowlers and we accepted that with lots of laughs. We then got to wander around the mall. Some of us went shopping while others played billiards.

A few days ago we were invited by the president of the University of Luzon to use his beach house for an afternoon so after the mall, our team, Arnold, Gigi, Pastor Grant, and our friends Alfred and Shalem were able to go and enjoy some time there. I am blown away by the generosity and hospitality we have been shown while we have been in the Philippines. I hope that I remember this throughout life and that I am able to show the same character in each part of my life and to everyone.

This evening we got to spend more time with friends that we met last week in Baguio. They came down tonight for two reasons: early tomorrow morning we will be leaving for 100 Islands and they are going to come with and today was our friend Jared's birthday. So we got to have a wonderful family reunion and birthday party with some sweet friends that are truly family.

Today was a great day and while we are coming towards the end of our time in the Philippines, I am excited about everything that we have gotten to do, all we have been shown, and the time that we still have here.”

[icharchivist]

I'm really sorry to say this, I know Metera is doing her best to be Miss Fanservice in the Versus roster, but she doesn't impress me as much as Belial does

Maybe it's her personality, maybe it's because you see women with huge breasts everywhere in Anime but have to seriously look for a man like Belial who is more than happy to show off what he's got

Maybe I'm not bisexual enough for her

Another thing that bothers me is that her original sprite didn't actually have those big bahonkeroos she's sporting now, y'know

Meanwhile Belial has always been packing pecs

Idk I just wanted to complain 😕

HELPP

i kinda understand. Metera kinda falls in this "try hard" to be horny that for me it doesn't work out. She does that mostly to have fun and not like, out of pure horny, and it can be fun as a result, but i don't really feel attracted to her either. (and i think i made it clear from raving about Miss Cathy that my problem isn't sexy women, it's just, how they're going about it)

And actually yeah i'm so upset about her boobs too. Like, in her original sprite she was sexy and everything but she did look like more "flat" than most of the women in the game, and i thought it was kinda interesting to have a woman being extremely sexy without relying on just giving her big boobs and leaving it at that. But then the more they went on with her arts the more they gave her and by the time of her summer units it's just, unrecognizable lmao.

i mean good for her for the boobjob i guess, but idk, i think she worked a lot better on her original art.

(tho i gotta say i do have a soft spot for her capped holiday look, since it doesn't focus much on her body and just on her mischief face, i find her cute)

I didn't read a lot of her stories, i've heard she's supposed to be a big sister, so perhaps her relationship with her sisters would eventually give me more insight on her. In the end i've only ever really seen it with her Holiday lines (bc one of my crewmate is HAUNTED by the way she sings Happy Birthday in a lewd way (and not the good kind of haunted) so a while back our crew made an app in which we all set up bday message for him, but all while Metera's bday voiceline plays in the back, and he was laughing so hard and touched while also cursing us, so now i just see Metera as a partner in crime), her quick appearance in Ferry Holiday's FE, and her appearance in the latest Lowain event. So to me it isn't enough to grasp most of her.

I'd say it's a bit difficult to compare her to Belial because ultimately, she is written to be fanservicy, in a very "male gaze" way. and Belial doesn't really come with this baggage, especially since his sexuality is more linked to characterization (and also an aspect of how you're supposed to be thrown off by it, though counting also on the people who would be turned on by it). (and just so we're clear I do think that some of the girl's sexuality can also be written as characterization over fanservice, imo this is the difference between Shalem and Fediel, who's sexuality is meant to be furthering their characters, and Hekate or Metera who has a much more fanservicy flare to it).

That said it's true that Belial is completely one of the kind, i don't really think most stories dare to go to these levels with their male characters, especially mobage. When you trace back the fan-reaction of most stuff gbf, for a long time, like a lot of gacha, the whole interest was mostly to keep the straight men's money. This is why for a long while we didn't have summer units for men. this is also why when they started to roll them it was only one a year, until they finally dared to do more later, compared to the amount of female summer units we get every year. I remember the turn about is supposed to have been Percival apparently, who, just after he joined the suptix pool, became the most suptixed character who brought them the most money at the time. And it was the turn around about how they realized they could actually do more to appeal to the male-attracted fanbase. Which is why he was the first Male Summer Unit also.

The thing is that it's really not usual for gacha like this to really bank a lot on what's considered to be the straight woman audience. Granblue has been the talk of a lot of mobage space for always being the "first" to really incorporate some male fanservice in their gacha where female fanservice is much more expected.

Belial probably wasn't expected to become the next step of that, but he really turned things around in a very unexpected way. Truly a man with a will on his own so much so that he changes the fanservice game all on his own. And i do think it may have cygames discuss what they can do to reproduce this success that has been bringing them even more money than any of the female fanservice stuff they've been releasing. Without the reaction to Belial i doubt we would have had anything like vday Wilnas for example.

anyway lots of ramblings but, yeah, Belial really is a beast of his own and really just, his sexuality kinda went off the rail in a sense which also makes it more raw and authentic. Metera is mostly just a safe fanservicy representation for example, but frankly i feel like the comparison doesn't even have much ground to exist due to the nature of how they came to be.

SO YEAH ramble ramble on my hand, sorry Metera your sexy spells don't work on us, i find her hilarious tho and it's all that matters to me o7