#so i think its understandable

[borrelia]

if you donate one single us dollar to the unrwa, you will have donated more money than you would have by clicking that stupid arab.orb link every day for four and a half years. yes, they do actually donate money to the unrwa, but even with tens of thousands of clicks, most of that money is the baseline $90 they send every quarter. from 2023 quarter 4, half a million clicks turned into $380.57. maths out to six hundreths of one cent per click. just donate to unrwa.

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[toa-arania]

Val's blind spot

Well, really that should be blind spots, but she thinks she only has the one.

Valerie Wester is not a very trusting person. Even people she considers to be her friends she is wary of to varying degrees between "You can make things inconvenient for me" and "You can instantly kill me on a whim". She tends towards overconfidence, but most of the time that is tempered by her paranoia. She is genuinely very intelligent, but can have trouble responding to unexpected situations. She is aware of this, and can usually play defence very well using a combination of quick thinking and an air of aloofness, so long as she is sufficiently paranoid of everything around her and sufficiently confindent in her ability to find a solution. When one of these things is deactivated, problems arise. We last saw this when a drug she made switched off her deductive reasoning, leaving her incapable of responding to the situation. This time, we're going to see what happens when her paranoia fails to kick in.

A little background. After the drugs night, Levi (werewolf himbo) realised that he was losing himself more to Khorne, a god of war and bloodshed that had taken residence in his mind, and took a page out of Val's book by coming up with a contingency plan involving Aluber (clown fairy). Aluber, thanks to a gift from the Fae King, has the ability to create magically-binding Unbreakable Vows that cause you to instantly die if you break them. This is one of many reasons that Val is fucking terrified of Aluber, although not actually the main one, which is his access to an Antimagic Chain spell that Val is acutely aware will kill her if it is used on her. Levi reasoned that a good way to prevent himself being completely taken over by Khorne is to make an Unbreakable Vow to not hurt a specific group of people, so that if he does so he will die and be unable to kill them. Aluber and Levi were attempting to enact this plan in secret.

As part of them figuring out ways to deal with Khorne, they got Val to help by casting Binding on Levi, a hex that prevents the target being able to harm people. They wanted to test how instantly Khorne responded to violence if Levi gets hit, and whether Val's magic could seal the response. Val cast this hex, and then used some of her other magic to go into Levi's mind (something Val has made a habit of now). Inside his mind was as Val expected, except for the ankle-deep layer of blood and the fractured layer of red magic that Val recognised as coming from Wesley, another witch that gave Levi a protective amulet. We tested what happened when Levi gets punched, and Val learnt a lot about the way Khorne interacts with him - specifically that the witches are basically the only thing holding him back. It is at this point that I remind you they have not told Val about the Unbreakable Vow plan because they have (admittedly correctly) assumed she would try to stop it.

Later that day, they attempted the spell on their own. As they tried to make the vow, red magic came from Levi that they assumed to be Khorne attempting to block the spell. Aluber, with the assistance of the Fae King, pushed his magic past it, shattering the red magic. Without Val there to recognise it as Wesley's, they had no idea that they were destroying Levi's primary layer of protection. Aluber passed out from the exertion, and Khorne took over Levi's body. Val's Binding spell was now the only thing left preventing him from harming anyone and causing the Unbreakable Vow to kill Levi. A spell that Levi had already requested should be short enough to wear off by football practice that afternoon. Khorne-Levi picked up Aluber's unconscious body and brought it to Val, claiming that he tried some fae bullshit on him that he managed to shake off.

Val has two blind spots. One of them is Wesley, who Val has known for a long time. They're good friends, even though they mostly act independently and often fuck with each other, and Val genuinely cares for him. She is aware that he is a weakness of hers, and tries to account for it semi-successfully. What Val has not yet fully realised is her second blind spot: Levi. So when she asked if the fae fuckery (suspecting antimagic) had affected the protective amulet and "Levi" said no, she believed him without trying to check for herself. After examining Aluber and working out that he'd tried to channel some of the Fae King's power, underestimating the strain it would put on him, she concluded that he had tried to attack Levi. All the evidence was there: Aluber being unconscious from magical overexertion; evidence of his spellcasting on Levi; Aluber's history of instability - even a lack of apparent effect on Levi made sense due the werewolves' natural resistance to magic.

Val took Aluber and told "Levi" to pretend everything was normal, and here I'm going to briefly break from the relatively serious tone of the post because what happened next was genuinely unhinged. Val had written down the formula for the Mystery Drug (which turned out to relax the inhibitions on supernatural powers) while she was making it, and since last time Aluber had some he became tiny, she tried to make him tiny with it again so she could put him in a box somewhere secret. It did not work. He ended up 10ft tall. She could not move him. Her cousin, a shapeshifter, came to see what was up, and Val asked for help moving Aluber. He decided to help by turning into a forklift, and the two of them loaded Aluber into a corpse flower. Val kept his head exposed so she could try to go into his mind, but the Fae King blocked her access, and while distracted by her cousin working out how to play megalovania with his horn she forgot to cover Aluber's head again, so he was later able to just teleport away when he woke up.

Val went to go and find Levi, who was also coming to find her and ask her to undo the spell Aluber had placed on him. Val had already been working on ways to undo fae magic because of her own concerns about Aluber, and told him that she'd need a while to figure it out, probably a few days. By this point, football practice was nearing and Binding had worn off, and as Khorne-Levi grabbed her by the shoulders to tell her to get on it fast, Val realised her mistake.

Val is frail. She is very aware of her weakness, in both a physical and supernatural sense. She isn't capable of standing up to most things in a direct confrontation, which is why she prefers to take a more meticulous, indirect route to problem-solving. Her need for control comes from her knowledge of how weak she is. Witch magic may be more versatile than any other type, but in terms of raw power it simply can't compete with that of the Fae or Angels, and definitely isn't much use in a fight. If it came to a fight between her and Levi, she would have one shot to nail a Binding before he simply snaps her neck, and because of her trust in Levi she had allowed herself to get into a position where she wouldn't even have that shot. However, Levi's core drive is the need to protect his friends. With Khorne using his body to put Val in danger, he was able to wrest control back, quite possibly saving both of their lives. Logically, Val knows that Khorne wouldn't have killed the one person he thinks could probably unpick whatever Aluber did to Levi, but the outcome of allowing herself to endanger her life like that is the same.

Val has told herself that she won't let that blind spot get exploited again. Val has not realised the extent of it. She's aware she's into Levi on a surface level (to be fair he is hot) but hasn't yet realised how much he affects her. I don't know how yet, but that blind spot is absolutely still exploitable and at some point it is going to go severely badly for her.

[thriftdyke]

it really does bother me how no one can seem to answer the question “what even is romantic attraction, really.” like some people are like “it’s who you wanna kiss and cuddle <3” and I’m like ok well kisses and cuddles can be either sexual or platonic depending on context. “It’s who you feel passion/desire/arousal for” well that just sounds like sexual attraction which you can have without even knowing somebody so I fail to see how that’s romantic. “It’s who you want to go on dates with” I go on dates with friends all the time plus “date” is a social construct anyway there’s really no innate difference between a date and hanging out. “it’s who you have deep feelings for” great news for you that can be literally any type of relationship. my friend told me she defined it as “who you wanna give roses to” and I’m like do u hear urself??? like the more I talk to people the more I’m convinced romance and romantic attraction is an elaborate socially fabricated illusion that has no real defining characteristics. and like there’s nothing Wrong with it being a constuct but why people are so attached to defending the supremacy of it is something I cannot for the life of me figure out

[hinamie]

thank u canon plant nerd megumi for my life

bonus:

[evelynpr]

Congratulations My Hero Academia for providing, possibly, the biggest and longest legit straightbaiting yet in shonen history.

Bonus points that their final chapter was released on yaoi day.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

a couple scribbles i cleaned up. also i think i like drawing him in varying states of distress

[feelo-fick]

um ok cool thanks for letting me know .... why are you telling me this

[wtfforged]

boy why you so legs

[ejsuperstar]

Imagine you live in pelican town. The new farmer has been here a couple weeks now and seems to be settling in, except... He's picking the weirdest friend choices. Like sure it's not weird to befriend the local fisherman, especially when he has an interest in fishing himself, but you're pretty sure you've seen him rooting through the Saloon's garbage with the local homeless man. As well, he keeps harassing the poor guy who works at Joja even though you KNOW he doesn't want to be friends with him.

And since you're on the topic of weirdness, isn't it odd he seemingly runs everywhere at a full sprint? Or just... Eats entire raw fish while fishing for "energy reasons"...

...

Despite all that, it's too early to call him off putting or anything... He has been engaging in town traditions, and he's started helping out with the old community centre. He's probably like the rest of you. Someone with a few quirks, that will fit in with the valley great!

Surely he can't get any weirder... Right?

[shkika]

exactly where u belong

[onawhimsicot]

i know not many people would want to read a 10,000 word article about the minecraft end poem and how the author, Julian Gough, was never fairly compensated for his work and has made it public domain.

But it's a very well-written and heartfelt read, and he makes it very clear that none of this is a cash-grab and despite the fact that he is essentially a starving artist in this capitalist society, he only mentions his financial struggles despite Minecraft's huge huge success at the bottom of this article and not in the tweets so as to not dilute his message.

Anyway, I just think it'd be cool if those who are able to could support him in some way whether it be subscribing to his substack or donating to his paypal (that's linked in the article, you can ctrl + F to find it easier), that's all.

[chiricat]

ryomina demons are winning

[ghostbite0]

please don't ever get rid of that smile i love so much

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[kristoffs-lullaby]

Jealousy, Jealousy