#thank you random tumblr user for correcting me

[cryovolcano17]

My mom was making giant worm on the string for my siblings and I made a recommendation

[touhou-memories]

8 Years Anniversary

Today, 12th July 2023, marks 8 years since the first post on this blog. 4200 posts later, there is still lots of content to be posted, so there are no plans to leave anytime soon (unless unexpected things happen, but hopefully not).

The blog has evolved a lot in these 8 years, initially created to post collages with characters' appearances, now it contains gifsets with characters and locations, music, comparisons between versions and other random trivia about the games. The pages are not finished, but currently I am not looking for any help with the blog. It is a freetime hobby (hence the non-regular posting schedule) and I prefer to search for things on my own. If you ever spot mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

Thank you all who follow me on Tumblr and also to the non Tumblr users who find my website useful. It makes me happy to know all this work is not in vain. For the Tumblr users who only viewed this blog through the dashboard, I recommend you try to view it from the main url https://touhou-memories.com/ for the complete experience.

See ya! ～

[ultrainfinitepit]

Hello!! I return with more pin making questions :]

In my first ask you mentioned that you'd be willing to go into detail about your favorite social medias, and as I have basically only used Tumblr that would be super useful!

It would also be wonderful if you'd be willing to talk about your experiences with the different shopfronts that you've used, but I understand if you can't due to partnership stuff.

And the last question for now, Newsletters! How did you go about setting one up/what program you use/how long does it take to write an update/etc.

Thank you so much!! You're awesome!!!

Hi again :)) sure I can answer this, this is going to be a very long post so I'll put my answers under the cut.

Same disclaimer as last time that all this is just what has worked for me or what I've personally observed, that doesn't mean this is all objectively correct or factual. Others will have different mileage or find other things that work even better.

Social Media

The three platforms I prefer the most are Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter.

General recommendations:

Respond to people's comments, even with something as simple as a "thank you" for a compliment. This will help build engagement and foster a good relationship with your audience.

Take nice product photos: keep your pin in focus with a nice background and good lighting. Often you only get one chance for your product to leave a good impression!

Pick only a few social media profiles to manage. Don't stretch yourself too thin such that you can't engage with your audience on all your social media.

Find your niche! It’s easier to gain followers for a specific type of merch (such as, angels) than for a broad range.

Tumblr

Posts have a long but sporadic lifespan thanks to the queue (sporadic means, they will exhibit random bursts of activity). And you can post large image sets and long text posts with links, for this reason it is my favorite platform.

Getting a following on Tumblr is largely luck-based. Users rebel against posts being pushed into their feed by the recommendation algorithm or boosts. Users find posts via other users and not so much the tags, although the tagging system is leagues better than Instagram's (which no longer shows most recent posts and only shows popular posts).

On Tumblr I get the most traffic from:

Responses to user submissions - for example, drawing people's angel requests.

Tag yourself posts

Silly or cute doodles and comics - especially if people can overlay their fandom darlings onto these posts.

Compilations of Pride-related designs, particularly of popular flags

I have noticed over the years, people do not reblog as much as in the past, so it's harder to get your posts noticed.

Instagram

In my opinion this is the easiest platform to grow an audience on. Instagram has a very predictable set of criteria for showing your posts to other users, through personal experience it is something like this:

Post once a day.

Post one Reel a day.

No more than three Story shares.

If you deviate from this for too long, or post too many times in a day, Instagram will deprioritize showing your posts to other users. This schedule can be a lot, so if possible I recommend having a buffer of saved up posts and Reels.

Instagram users are pickier about what they like to see. I recommend keeping your profile looking neat and professional; WIPs don't seem to do well there. Instagram users like illustrations and heavily-visual posts; they do not respond well to slides with text on them unless it is a tutorial or tag-yourself post.

Some users like to put memes or other silly images at the end of their posts. I personally don't do this, but I've been told the reason for it is: people share the silly images and that gains more traffic for the post even if they are not sharing the main content.

On Instagram I get the most traffic from:

Fanart of recently popular characters

Tag yourself posts

Pride-related art for popular flags

Cute, colorful illustrated creatures

Anything that asks for audience feedback in the comments. More comments means more engagement, which means it's bumped up in the algorithm.

Hosting monthly art challenges such as Angeltober

Bare chested men

And I have noticed DTIYS challenges are popular and a great way for people to find your profile, although I haven't hosted one of these yet.

Tags on Instagram appear to matter less than in the past, but I still think they are worth using. Try to tag for the content in your post (such as "#biblically accurate angel") instead of using tags for artists or small businesses (such as "#smallbusinessstrong"). Everyone else is using these tags so you have lots of competition, but no one is trawling through those tags so you have less engagement from them. Users are looking for specifically the content they like, they don't care who is posting it.

Twitter

The most arcane out of these three platforms. Getting noticed on Twitter seems to be largely luck-based as well. I had my Twitter profile for a while with little traffic on it until I started posting the new Pride Angels, then it blew up. Hashtags are pretty useless on Twitter and I didn't have many followers before then so I'm not sure why those got popular at that time.

On Twitter I get the most traffic from:

Pride-related art for popular flags

Other relatable art such as for astrological signs

Dishonorable Mention: TikTok

I have a TikTok but I just use it to crosspost my Instagram Reels. I do not have many followers on TikTok, I do not put effort into it, and I dislike the interface. That being said, I have heard from other creators it is way easier than Instagram to grow on if you are willing to make videos and post every day.

A note on blacklisted words

On Twitter, Instagram, and possibly Tumblr too: words like "shop" "link" "commission" etc. may cause your post to be deprioritized. This is because social media platforms do not want you going off of them to some other site to spend money elsewhere. That's why you'll notice people censoring these words ("shop" to "sh0p").

Personally I dislike doing this, it just makes me feel silly, so I don't bother. But I will admit, it hurts my posts. So this is something to keep in mind if you want to do shop promotion on social media.

Shops

The shops I run are, in the order of making them:

Redbubble

The lowest possible barrier to entry for a merch artist: they literally do everything from production to shipping for you, and all you do is provide the artwork. The trade-off is that it's very hard to make any significant money from Redbubble (I make maybe a few cents at most from each sale), and you have no control over the quality of the products.

Etsy

My referral link here.

While Etsy can be imposing at first, it is probably the easiest out of all the marketplaces to start out on. There is a lot of information to fill out to get started, so take it slow so you don't get overwhelmed. It does get easier after the first listing. Once you make one listing you can just keep duplicating and changing it a little so you don't have to keep making listings from scratch.

Etsy claims you need ten listings in your shop before you open it, but you can ignore that.

Once you've gotten started, there's lots of little tricks to learn such as letter mail shipping, all about VAT, improving listings, sections, and so on that I could go into more detail on if anyone is interested. For now I'll just focus on the platform itself.

I like that Etsy has a marketplace search, as a customer it is really nice to use. I like that it has one big cart for all the items I am looking at, and that it has a favorites system. I also like as a customer how each shop is uniform; I know exactly how to search through each shop and what format to expect. I do enjoy artists' custom shops but, sometimes their interfaces are tough to navigate.

Etsy is reasonably good at showing your items to people, which is the number one reason I recommend it for beginners. Just make sure to put effort into your listings such as tagging them, adding nice photos, and videos.

They have protection features built-in such as covering refunds if an item is delivered but the customer claims to not have received it. Etsy also enables international shipping with VAT which is great for EU/UK customers. My biggest gripe with Etsy is the fees, which I've already complained about.

Gumroad

Not much to say about Gumroad really. I only use it to list digital items such as PDFs of my lineart. I think it's saved me a few inquiries from people looking for my art for tattoos. Since all that art is for free on social media anyway, I don't charge for purchases on Gumroad. That's just a personal choice though.

Mercari

Not much to say about Mercari either. I use it to list pins from my personal collection, though I've seen a handful of pin makers use it for the pins they've created. I think the Mercari listing creation is atrocious: they like to recommend titles for your items when you upload new images, and will overwrite existing titles.

I've been considering moving away from Mercari, they recently switched their fee model so now buyers pay fees instead of sellers. This means while sellers can lower their prices, buyers get sticker shock and then ask for discounts on top of already-discounted items. I'm only on there because it's the most popular place for second-hand pin selling.

Shopify

So far I've really enjoyed Shopify. The setup was nightmarishly hard, not to turn anyone off of it but it took me literal months. You can import your listings from Etsy to Shopify but then you have to redo all the SKUs, link up photos to variants, and so on. If you have a ton of listings like me it takes a while. If you only have a few it is more worth it or, might even be worth starting out on if you can do sufficient promotion.

The major advantage of Etsy over Shopify is the marketplace feature: if you don't need the help of Etsy to promote your items then Shopify might be the better option to start out on.

I like that Shopify has significantly lower fees vs. Etsy. However, they do payouts differently and in a way I dislike. Etsy will deduct your shipping fees before calculating your payout balance, while Shopify will payout your balance and then charge you for shipping as part of your monthly bill. So you need to make sure to set aside some of your funds always to cover the Shopify shipping charge.

Additionally, to enable certain integrations or features you will need to pay for them monthly, which can add up. To sync my inventory between Shopify, Etsy, and Faire I use Trunk Inventory, which charges me a monthly $60 fee. That's in addition to the monthly Shopify fee.

Faire

I actually hate Faire despite using it. I was going to use Tundra but Faire drove them out of business (lawsuit pending). Now Faire is the only game in town for wholesale so I'm forced to use them, not that it's done me much good since I haven't had any sales there.

I can rant for ages about Faire's horrendous fees and outdated product import. But if you're a beginner you don't have to worry about wholesale selling, so I'll leave that discussion for another time. If anyone wants to hear more from me about Faire they can send another ask.

My stockists

It's quite hard to give honest reviews of my stockists here, since they might see them so, I'll just share my Linktree for them and you all can investigate on your own and inquire privately.

Newsletter

I used to use Tinyletter but it shut down, so now I use Email Octopus. Here's a referral link, and you can check out my newsletter sign up page here.

Email Octopus doesn't have a newsletter archive, and the interface is more complicated than Tinyletter's, which I dislike; but I like it better than Tinyletter's replacement Mailchimp.

You can try these out for yourself and see which you like better, it really is personal preference. All newsletter services are essentially the same: all you need is a sign up page, a way to store emails, and an ability to send a newsletter to them.

To get people to sign up for your newsletter, I personally recommend always offering it as a choice. For example, if you run a pin campaign, send an update where you share a link to your newsletter to your backers so they have the option to sign up. Do not export their emails and add them to your newsletter without a choice. I have been on the receiving end of this as a backer/customer and it makes me feel bad: it's extra emails in my inbox I didn't agree to and it feels like the creator misusing my information even if technically they are not. As a fellow creator I totally get why others might do this, it's an effective way to get lots of new newsletter signups at once. I just don't personally like it.

Shopify has a built-in newsletter feature you can use as well if you make a Shopify storefront. From your dashboard you can go to Marketing > Create campaign.

I like to send out a shortened newsletter via Shopify. Usually what I do is copy my full newsletter from Email Octopus to Shopify, and remove any bits not directly related to my Shopify, such as news on crowdfunding campaigns.

Writing your newsletter

Writing a newsletter doesn't take much time, and I think it should be a low effort task. In fact, if you make it too long people will not read it.

Throughout the month leading up to a shop update I will update my newsletter with whatever new items are ready, taking only a few minutes here and there. I include a few photos and I make sure to link to the items once they are listed (truncated example below).

I will also alert people to any sales or other special offers, news about stockists, and crowdfunding campaigns: anything a potential buyer would be interested in.

I have seen other artists share much longer newsletters with impressive graphics, sections on their art process, personal updates - but for myself I usually skip over that stuff in my inbox, so I don't do it as a creator. For others it might be worth the effort!

Final Thoughts

If you read all this, thank you! I know this was a very long post. I hope it helps at least one of you. I won't keep you much longer: you can find links to everything I mentioned in my Linktree and if you have more questions you can send an ask.

One day I'd like to make a tutorial series for making and selling merch, so this was useful as a draft for that. I would also include manufacturer reviews. If that's something you'd like to see someday you can let me know.

[fadebolt]

I've seen some people posting their attacks collection from this year, so here's mine:

With the lovely targets being:

1. meowynn

2. aquaticnebulae

3. soul-sylver

4. sb-is-a-thing

5. saintwyrm

6. bindibites

7. phishtoast

8. pansear-doodles

9. toiletpapericecream

Decided not to ping them here, since I already did it once when I posted the attacks individually. But these are their blog names, and they're cool people with cool art - so feel free to look through their stuff!

This was an awesome first year of Artfight! Huge thanks to everyone who sent me their creations involving my powerswap scugs, I adore them all quite a lot! And thanks for all the wonderful comments and reactions to my attacks as well!

You guys were wonderful, and I hope I'll get to see you next year as well! :)

(Bonus ramblings about AF thoughts below cut. Be warned, they do be lengthy)

So when I was starting out with the site, I looked around on the internet to see what people had to say (out of curiosity, and to maybe find something helpful). And apparently, there are a bunch of entitled users that complain if the art you send them isn't "high quality" enough, or if you don't send a revenge for their attacks.

And I'm just sitting here, and wondering which Artfight did these people show up to, cus I've frankly never seen a person like that. Everyone was super sweet and appreciative when I attacked them, and I received zero scorn from attackers I didn't revenge. Perhaps it's something that happens only outside the Rain World community?

Anyhow, I ended this year with a solid 9/5, which might seem like rookie numbers for many, which... is actually kind of fair, considering that I am technically a rookie.

I really didn't expect to get attacked at all, considering that my refs were slightly rushed, and not particularly polished (something I'll hopefully get around to addressing in the meantime). Though I did have hopes that sharing my profile on Tumblr, and some Discord servers might help.

Funny thing is, I don't think any of those 5 people came from there, as they haven't interacted with me on Tumblr yet, and they haven't joined the servers that I was in. There's no way for me to confirm this, but they probably found me while browsing through the AF website itself, which is extremely flattering (especially since I initially thought that folks usually just attack their friends... turns out that ain't quite the case).

But this also proves that my theory about people liking powerswap Slugcats was actually correct! Which is great, cus they're a blast to create, and hopefully by next year, I'll get to have the other half of the cast (name ideas are 'Lightcat', 'The Crusader', 'The Solitary' 'The Augmented' and 'The Gambler', but it's all subject to change).

There were also some of my OCs which showed up in my attacks - I'm planning on adding them in, too. (So if you like necromancers, wizards that copy the spells of others, and weird fanchildren of niche ships, then I got some wonderful news for you!)

Speaking of my attacks, I definitely didn't draw nearly as much as I did for Art Month. That's because I decided it would be better to take things a bit slower, to have more fun, and avoid burnout. As I would rather send over a few attacks that I enjoyed, than to rapidly rush out like 60, to hit as many people as possible.

Sure, it'll mean that I won't get to attack as many people, but I still think it's worth it, as I get to enjoy myself more, while my target gets a better piece.

I was slightly concerned that a lot of people would find it insulting that I used a randomizer to pick targets, but nobody seemed to mind, which is great. After all, there were no bad intentions on my part, I just simply had too many people I considered worthy of being attacked, and I needed some outside help to combat my indecisiveness. There's simply too many great artists in this community!

My list consisted of SC members that stayed (I was grateful for their efforts to keep the place alive, and I felt this would be a great way to thank them), some other people from the fandom that I liked, and my attackers, who were given a multiplier of 5 to their chances, cus yeah xd

There were over 30 people there, so it's safe to say that I didn't get to most of them. I think next year, I'll give them increased chances too, and hopefully, I get around to most of 'em. (Unless I'll have to work on my thesis in July... I don't quite remember when that's going to happen. Hopefully, that won't be the case, and I'll have a bunch of free time, like this year, and I'll be able to do more than 9 attacks then. Fingers crossed)

So that's pretty much all I wanted to say here. I'm not sure if I should post any updates or uploads I do to my characters there btw. I suppose we'll see.

But the event was real fun, and I'm looking forward to experiencing it again!

[olderthannetfic]

I'm in a server where one person consistently complained constantly, vented in channels that weren't meant for venting, talked over others who were venting in correct channels, and couldn't understand (or care) that other people had (gasp!!) different thoughts on characters.

Someone finally seemed to get fed up and responded what I know I and other people I talked to were thinking -- basically that complaining everywhere in the server is stressing others tf out, and that they come across like an asshole who expects everyone in a random server to drop everything to talk about their problems. Cause honestly? They did.

The individual flipped out at them. They genuinely didn't see that they were annoying people at best, and stressing people out (or more) at worst. I've talked to friends about how some people don't seem to grasp that other people online are people as well, and just because they don't constantly overshare and complain doesn't mean they're not going through shit. This person flat out said that. The person calling them out mentioned also being chronically ill, and the response amounted to belittling them and saying that they were 'so much worse off so has the right to vent'.

This person left the server (thank fuck, things are already so much better, and the channels for personal shit aren't a wall of them complaining about everything wrong with them, everything others have apparently done to them, and anything and everything in between), but they very much left thinking they were some victim, not someone who was pissing everyone off and stressing people out.

I guess I just didn't really think people like this existed, not to this degree. I know a lot of us can be guilty of venting online (just look at your inbox sometimes lol, or me now), but I think I always thought people were aware they were doing it? But I checked out this person's tumblr, and they had walls of text talking about how horrible everyone in the fandom was for not supporting them when they were going through hard times and needed a space to talk. Some users were responding things like "fandom's an escape for everyone, people don't always want to hear venting or interact with it, people are going through their own shit, and more" and oh god this person didn't care.

And just... huh?? The server's for fandom to talk about random characters. There are some non fandom channels yeah, but people usually just talk about knitting or made a random comment about having a shitty day.

idk, I know fandom is socialisation for a lot of people as well as a space to talk about blorbos, it certainly is for me, but expecting people to put their own mental health on the line cause you had a bad day just seems cruel. And given their tumblr, they're still doing it, and think they're in the right.

This just happened a couple days ago, but the server is already a much more chill place now that they're gone. Must be an exhausting way to go through life.

--

[viv-hollande]

As Promised, The Israel-Palestine Megapost of Doom

Content Warning: This post discusses both the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the current Israel-Gaza War. As such, it contains frank discussions of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides both past and present, racism, antisemitism, colonialism, terrorism and more. As an additional tone warning, I guess: I am by nature a pretty flippant person. I’ve been criticized for that in the past, and probably will be again in the future. I don’t know if it's just who I am, or if maybe I need a therapist. I have tried to reign in some of my worse impulses, especially when talking about the actual events themselves, to try to give due respect to those affected. Nevertheless, if that kind of attitude offends or disturbs you, maybe sit this one out. 

This post is brought to you in its current form thanks to the generous actions of Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose untimely death many decades after it was deserved nevertheless brought me joy great enough to drag me out of angryposting mode and into hopefully more coherent essay-writing mode. So here is the partially revised, partially rewritten, and greatly expanded post that I promised. 

While I don’t have a cohesive thesis, I have written this with the intention of addressing/responding to the state of conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, and around the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis. I am focusing substantially on the online discourse because it’s the only thing I have even a chance of changing. I’m a soon-to-no-longer-be-teenage college sophomore without a lot of disposable income. I’ve already called my Senators and House Rep. I really don’t have much influence beyond my power to try to persuade random internet users to be less bad. 

I’ve tried to restrain my tendency for purple prose, self-righteousness, and gratuitous moral judgements; you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. I know that I am definitely not an expert or authority on this topic, but neither is most anyone else on this fucking website. It didn’t stop them and it won’t stop me. 

But before that, some brief words on my previous post. Unlike my usual angryposting where I tend to regret everything I say and do while in the anger spiral, I can actually say that I stand by more or less everything I said in that post. I do have one correction and one clarification though. Clarification: the “Stealth Echoes” I am referring to are instances where the word Israel or Israeli are placed in quotation marks specifically. Example: As per a spokesperson of the “Israeli” Defense Forces, “Something something ceasefire violation.” Used as such, the “Stealth Echoes” around Israel or Israeli are used to signal belief in the illegitimacy of Israel. It’s literally just (((echoes))) revived. A few people thought I was talking about the use of quotes in quotation marks. Now, the correction: in my anger, I believe that I overstated the prevalence of the “Stealth Echoes”. I said 20-40%, which upon reflection was too high, brought on by seeing a long string of said posts in rapid succession. I would now say that the figure is closer to 5-10%, jumping up to 10-15% if you include instances of censoring Israeli like I*****i and the use of words like Isntreal. I feel that as a practical matter they are indistinguishable; they serve the same purpose. Whatever the number, it is too damn high and should not be going unchallenged. If you’re using them, stop. If you see someone else use them, either in a tweet or on Tumblr, don’t share them. 

That done, on with the post!

To start with, I want to establish some important concepts and ideas that I’m going to expand upon later so that you are aware and thinking about them going in. Some of these will seem pretty basic, but they are important. Trust me. 

Words mean things. Seriously. Words have meaning, both in isolation and as part of sentences. Many words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use them correctly. Incorrect usage of words deprives language of its utility and power. At certain points in this essay, you might think that I am being overly pedantic, but that specificity is important. 

Humans possess a strong drive to create narratives, especially out of history. This is normal; almost all humans do it. However, the tendency towards narrative creates a pitfall where the narrative begins to supplant the actual events in discussion and popular consciousness. Actual history is reshaped, often through omission or erasure, to fit the existing narrative. It is this narrative, not the actual history, that informs attitudes and debate. This is a problem for all history, but especially with a history as long, divisive, and deeply emotionally effective as the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Pragmatism and idealism are broadly speaking two competing approaches towards making plans and decisions. Pragmatism is generally concerned with evaluating the state of reality and making decisions based on their objective practical effects. Though they are not necessarily incompatible, pragmatism possesses no inherent obligations to concepts like justice, morality, or good. Idealism, by contrast, is concerned with defining what the world should look like and aims to achieve that goal. This ideal world can theoretically be informed by anything, but is usually defined by morality. I generally believe that what is is more important than what should be. Whether in matters of politics, diplomacy, or war, it is better to evaluate the state of reality as best you can and tailor your goals to what is practically achievable rather than trying to force reality to conform to your idealized future. 

In general, I will try to avoid ascribing intent to any individual or action, except where I feel that concrete evidence of intent is publicly available. Astute readers may know where I am going with this. 

Rivers of ink have been spilled teasing apart the differences between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more, and between Palestine and Israel. This post is long enough without retreading all of that here. Nevertheless, I will do my best to use specific, accurate terminology where applicable. 

The past is not the present. There are many facets to this point, and they will come up fairly often. For now, just keep this in mind. 

With that over with, on to…

Anti-Colonialism & History

The Israel-Palestine conflict is usually characterized by the pro-Palestinian camp as an anti-colonialist struggle. In isolation, this is not a statement that I would disagree with. The modern history of Israel and Palestine is a history of colonialism, or near enough for government work. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual history of Israel and Palestine has been reduced to a simplified narrative of righteous anti-colonialist struggle. That narrative erases the genuine complexity and nuance that is present in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have not the time, patience, nor expertise to explain the 100+ year long history of this conflict; for a reasonably comprehensive, and as far as I know, accurate summation of the origins and course of the conflict, see this video. However, I do want to note some things that I see as important to the conflict or my arguments about it. 

The Jews, whether defined as a group ethnically or religiously, have a historical connection to the land of Israel, and thus possess a potentially (we’ll get to it) legitimate claim to the land; this is, in my opinion, an important intellectual and practical difference from other examples of colonialism.

The ideological motivation behind Zionism was and still is complex, but an important and undeniable part was a desire for a safe haven from antisemitism. Keep in mind, Zionism as an idea first began to spread in earnest in the latter half of the 19th century, during an aggressively antisemitic period in European history. France experienced a surge in the popularity of antisemitic, pro-Catholic revanchists, monarchists and proto-fascists after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; this would culminate in the Dreyfus Affair. The Catholic Church itself was a powerful institutional advocate of antisemitism. It took until the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, for the Catholic Church to declare as official church doctrine that Jews, literally all Jews, past, present, and future were not in fact categorically guilty of the death of Christ, as had been church doctrine for literal centuries. The 1960s. Russia experienced wave after wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that lasted well into the 1920s, only really ending after the Bolsheviks victory in the Russian Civil War (though this would not be the end of Russian, and later Soviet, antisemitism). The rise of German nationalism was intimately and irrevocably tied in with antisemitism's rise to cultural ubiquity in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany. Even in the United Kingdom, which in the 19th and 20th centuries was positively tolerant by contemporary European standards, reflected in to appointment of Jews in prominent political positions up to and including Prime Ministers, was facing a resurgence in antisemitism. It may seem that I'm harping on the point for far too long, but a) I want to emphasize the truly dire straits facing the Jewish diaspora even before the Holocaust and b) while I would like to believe that the historical threat of antisemitism is accepted as common knowledge, I have been wrong before. See also: previous angry rant.

This point is possibly the most important: many Zionists, before and after the Holocaust, believed that the only way to secure the safety of the Jews in Israel was the creation of a Jewish majority state. Back when the land that was to become Israel and Palestine was believed to be mostly empty, this would have seemed easy to achieve by simply settling the area with a new Jewish population. However, after it became known that the land intended for a Jewish state was in fact inhabited, and by a substantial population no less, any intelligent Zionist would have known that the creation of any substantial Jewish majority state would require the forced eviction of the land's extant, mostly Arabic population.

I was struggling to find a place for this, so it’s going here. I have thus far avoided the use of a popular term used in relation to Israel; settler-colonialism. I have avoided its use because I see it as overused, poorly defined, and ahistorical. According to Wikipedia, accessed 30 November 2023, “Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.” If defined as such, I argue that the term settler-colonialism is practically useless because it describes literal millennia of human history. Using this definition, I have compiled a non-comprehensive list of examples of settler-colonialism, in roughly reverse chronological order: Israeli settlements in Gaza, Russification of Kaliningrad, Russification of the Crimean Peninsula, Sinicization in Xinjiang and Tibet, started by the late Qing and restarted by the PRC, British conquest of independent Boer states, Boer conquest of modern day South Africa, Ottoman colonization of Greece and the Aegean Islands, Russian conquest of Siberia, the Japanese colonization of Korea and Taiwan, centuries of successful and failed conquests of Cambodia by Vietnamese and Thai kingdoms, conquests by the Inca Empire, European colonization of the Americas, Venetian colonization across the Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, Turkic migrations into Central Asia and Anatolia, the Mongol conquests, the maritime empires of Indonesia, the Muslim conquests and subsequent Arabicization of North Africa and the Middle East, the entire history of the Roman Empire, any of the dozens of examples of Classical Greek colonies in Greece, Anatolia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the Achemenid conquests. Hell, the Phoenecians were so into colonization that one of their colonies eventually became a colonial empire in and of itself, and if you believe that all of those colonies were established on empty, virgin land then I got a seaside condo in Almaty to sell you. Though I don’t have time to go through them all, all of the above examples have either been cited by academics as examples of settler-colonialism, or share substantial commonalities with cited examples in my opinion. My problem with settler-colonialism as a term is that it is fundamentally based in modern concepts of indigeneity and nationalism. To put it bluntly, applying ahistorical modern concepts to a time and place that knew nothing of them is stupid. The vague definitions and overuse of the term compound these problems and threaten to misrepresent a near-universal human practice as an exclusively Western European phenomenon, and serve to complicate and frustrate conversation around instances where a more specific definition would be useful to meaningfully distinguish between it and other colonial projects; South Africa being a prime example. Specific language used accurately is important. All that being said, modern European colonialism more broadly and the effects thereof are important fields of study, and due to both temporal proximity and geographical reach, colonialism as it was practiced by modern European empires has had an outsized negative impact on the living conditions of billions of people currently alive in the year 2023. Sorry for all that, I just had to get it off of my chest. 

So, back to the problem at hand. The point of view that sees Zionism as simply another expression of European colonialism is, in my opinion, oversimplified or even outright wrong. The fundamental problem with viewing Zionism as just another European colonial endeavor is that European Jews were generally not seen as European, but as either foreign invaders or domestic subversives. European Jews were generally excluded from the national identities developing across Europe, with very few exceptions. Where Zionism did recieve gentile support, it was secured through moral arguments and intellectual persuasion, not sinister influence. Zionism, while it was influenced by colonialism, Orientalism, and even aspects of white supremacy, was an intellectual idea and practical endeavor primarily advocated by a subset of the Jewish diaspora. In contrast to European colonialism, which was motivated in part or in whole by a mix of greed, national pride, white supremacy, and the belief in a ‘benevolent’ civilizing and christianizing mission, the intellectual underpinning of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the most legitimate claim to the land that is now Israel and Palestine as their historical homeland. That belief beggars an obvious question: do they? 

Maybe?!

This is a large part of the reason why arguments about Zionism get so tangled and ugly and GAHH!. Zionism is the product of applying late 19th century concepts of nationalism and a people’s right to a homeland to a people exiled from their homeland over a thousand years before. Except it’s still more complicated than that, because the return of the Jews to Israel is an idea that is as old as the exodus itself. So the end result is that who you support is often decided by your personal answer to any number of thorny, complicated questions. Are the Jews indigenous to Israel? Are the Arabs indigenous to Palestine? If a people are expelled from their land, do they have the right to return? If yes, does that right expire? If it does, then how long does it last? Should special privilege be afforded to a people without a current homeland? What about a people who have experienced suppression, violence, and social rejection? Is it possible for a land to have multiple indigenous groups? If so, what about the right to return? Can one indigenous group act in a colonialist or imperialist manner towards another? 

These questions do have answers, but even a simple yes or no requires additional explanation, elaboration, and will inevitably conflict with opposing answers. The concepts they rest on are complicated and nuanced. One that I’ve mentioned before, and one that you’re probably sick of hearing about at this point, is indigeneity. The reason I harp on this is because it is another modern idea, overused and poorly defined, that is useful, but whose applicability is less universal that an America-centric conception would suggest. Unlike in the Americas, where the dividing line between indigenous and immigrant is fairly clean cut, the Old World’s long list of conquests, migrations, depopulations, pandemics, and famines make the concept of indigeneity really fucking messy. As an example, consider the Turks. The Turks live in Turkey, or at least most of them do. Turkish nationalism, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, considers Anatolia to be the homeland of the Turkish people. Do you know where the Turks are from? 

Mongolia. 

Or at least that general area. Archeological evidence is a little vague. I had a summary of that whole process here, but it was too long and I cut it. Summary2, the Seljuk Turks came to rule over Anatolia in the 10th century, starting a roughly 1000 year long process of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic conversion. In the late 19th century, the multiethnic but Turkish-ruled Ottomans began to develop and promote Turkish nationalism, partly in response to European nationalism. Because the Turkish people lived mostly in Anatolia when Turkish nationalism was developed, modern day Turkey adopted the status of homeland to the Turks. In conclusion, shit’s wack. 

This is just one of literally thousands of examples of ways in which the concepts of nationalism and indigeneity are, seriously, I’m not just saying words here, complicated. They just are. These questions don’t have simple, satisfying answers and the discussion around them should reflect the nuances of the situation, but usually don't. 

I have seen people expressing sentiments along the lines of, “Sitting back and debating the inexhaustible complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict ad nauseam is obscuring the active suffering of the Palestinian people.” This is a sentiment that I understand, but do not agree with. It is important to talk about the abuses that Israel is committing in Gaza and in the West Bank, and to condemn them as criminal and immoral. But the discussion around the Israel-Gaza War does not take place in a vacuum. Discussions of the current war and of the wider conflict inevitably leave the realm of discussing what just happened and enter the realm of why. And the answer to that why? is almost inevitably wrapped up in narrative. There is an overwhelming tendency for the pro-Palestinian camp to reject the idea that Zionism might, in even a small way, have a legitimate argument. For most of the pro-Palestinian camp, the answer to the fundamental underlying question of Zionism, are the Jews indigenous to Israel? is no. Full stop. That is the narrative of Palestinian resistance. That is the narrative of anti-colonialism. That is the narrative that says that Israel is a European settler-colony. That is the narrative that delegitimizes the State of Israel. And that is a narrative that needs to change because that narrative makes negotiation and compromise impossible. Delegitimization is to nation-states what dehumanization is to people. Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, President Lincoln referred to the conflict as a “rebellion” and the Confederacy as “rebels”, “insurrectionists”, or “traitors”. Direct quotes. A legitimate state possesses rights, can be negotiated with, and once recognized cannot be derecognized easily. An illegitimate entity must be crushed. Regardless of the crimes of Israel, and oh boy, are we going to get into those, an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will have to be a negotiated resolution, because Israel isn’t going away. 

I have my own personal beliefs about all of the above questions and more. I won’t share them because they aren’t important, and it's not really my place. However, to reiterate some of what I have said; I do think that the history of Israel and Palestine can be accurately characterized as a colonialist history, but I feel that the narrative of anti-colonialism papers over the moral complexity of the situation and intentionally delegitimizes Zionism and Israel.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve mostly been focusing on my problems with the pro-Palestian side, for several reasons. Once again, this essay is supposed to be less about the conflict itself and more about the narratives that I have been seeing online. Since this is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian website, addressing that narrative has taken precedence. For that same reason, posting anti-Israeli content does feel a little bit like preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I have many, many thoughts about Israel and the pro-Israeli narratives, and I clearly have no compunctions whatsoever about screaming my bullshit into the void, so let us now talk about… 

Israel & Narrative

And also a little bit more about the Palestinian narrative. Sorry, everything’s kinda interconnected and it's hard to separate sometimes. 

So I know that I tagged my last post as “kicking the hornets’ nest”, but this next bit is more like throwing a hornets’ nest at a bees’ nest sitting on the back of a tiger, but here goes. 

For at least 90% of the people on this site, the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is completely irrelevant, except for its utility in constructing narratives. 

A bold statement, you say. Well yes, but it’s a bold statement that I will stand by. Most of the discussion on this website, and elsewhere, is being driven by people for whom the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is either an academic matter, or a cudgel to beat their opponents with. There are, as always, a few exceptions. The Holocaust is one, in no small part due to its scope and relevance even outside Israel-Palestine. The First Arab-Israeli War, and concurrently the Nakba, is another due to its status as as the opening salvo of the Israel-Palestine conflict, due to the immense suffering it caused to the Palestinian people, and due to its close relationship with the right of return, which holds importance both as narrative component and as a practical political issue directly affecting the lives millions of Palestinians. Things are messy and everything has caveats. 

Jupiter the nonbinary MCR stan from Wisconsin did not buy an authentic keffiyeh from a Palestinian factory or participate in the local Free Palestine march because they’re intimately versed in and personally affected by the geopolitics of the Six-Day War. 

They’re doing all of that because Israel is a colonialist Amerikkkan puppet that attacks its neighbors without provocation, and Bibi’s latest genocide just killed a few 9/11s worth of children. 

David, 41-year-old 4chan refugee, closet brony, “Classical Liberal” of the Carl Benjamin variety, born and raised in Buttfuck, Upstate NY, isn’t ranting and raging about the ceasefire agitators over Thanksgiving dinner because he’s thoroughly studied and is greatly aggrieved of the history of terrorism in the Palestinian liberation movement, or because he put the work in to fully understand the 2006 elections in Gaza and wholeheartedly regrets their outcome. 

He’s worked up ‘cause the bus-bombing towelheads have done it again, and he doesn’t give a hoot how many Gazans die ‘cause they shoulda known who they was votin’ for. 

Tumblr user viv-hollande, pro-incest Kaeluc truther from [redacted] USA wasn’t crouched over the toilet losing his lunch studying the long, tragic history of the Israel-Palestine crisis. 

He was losing his lunch because they just bombed a hospital, 500 people are dead, the bastards did it and they’ll deny it just like with Hook and Miller and Abu Akleh, shitting hells it’s never going to end- 

viv-hollande jumped to a conclusion that was informed by a narrative, and proceeded to waste several hours angrily arguing with an Israeli Tumblr user and stubbornly denying credible evidence and what he was seeing with his own eyes because of a narrative, much of which he read about but did not live through. There remain many questions about what happened at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but the preponderance of evidence has fallen on the side of a Palestinian misfire. If you think that the evidence provided by over a dozen governments, media outlets, and independent analysts was all fabricated on the orders of Puppet-master Bibi, stop. You’re being an antisemite. Please learn from my fuckup. 

The above statement mostly applies to the world worth of spectators to this conflict and not to Israelis and Palestinians themselves. For those who lived through those events, or who have family who lived through them, there is obviously a direct personal connection to that history which, on a human scale at least, really isn’t that old. There are survivors of both the Holocaust and the Nakba still around. 

I also want to re-emphasize, just in case it got lost in the sludge, that the above statement concerns the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, not current events. Even for those far removed from the conflict, witnessing the ongoing bloodshed in real time is still a traumatic experience that is bound to provoke strong emotional responses and influence people’s position on the wider conflict. Narrative or no, seeing dead children is going to have an effect on you. 

With that out of the way, on to the actual pro-Israeli narrative. In no small part due to less exposure, I am less confident in my analysis of the pro-Israeli narrative than I am of the pro-Palestinian narrative, especially as it pertains to Americans arguing online. But, I have divined a few significant main points. 

One of the most important parts of the pro-Israeli point of view is that of a siege narrative. The Israeli narrative holds that the state of Israel has existed under the threat of existential annihilation since its inception. I have also seen in many places a direct conflation of the military and political threats to Israel’s existence with the wider history of antisemitism and specifically with the Holocaust. This goes all the way up to Benjamin Netenyahu himself, who falsely claimed, among other wrong things, that it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine who convinced Hitler to order the Holocaust. This statement was roundly condemned by basically everyone, whether Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, for good reason. It’s tantamount to Holocaust denialism. 

The pro-Israeli narrative fundamentally denies the legitimacy and/or existence of Palestinian identity and a Palestinian state. In many cases, it denies the Palestinian right to a state in Palestine at all. This stance is directly related to the perceived necessity for a Jewish-majority Israel, and serves to facilitate the forced removal of the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this stance represents a fundamental obstacle to a negotiated end to the conflict. While I can’t prove it, I very much suspect that some, especially the loudest deniers of Palestinian identity, are aware of this and continue to do so intentionally to undermine peace and facilitate Israel’s continued expansion at Palestinian expense. 

For Americans, especially after 9/11, the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been folded into the wider narrative of the War on Terror. Israel-Palestine and the War on Terror are connected, but that connection is a lot more complicated than the American narrative, which, in its own racist, uninformed way, can’t tell the difference between Palestians, Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Afghans, and the completely uninvolved Sikhs, several of whom nevertheless were attacked and killed by racist, overzealous American “patriots”. This conflation degrades the conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict and reduces the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. And while this last bit is essentially unfalsifiable conjecture, I suspect that the collapse of the War on Terror, and the changing narratives around it, plays a part in why the reaction to the current war has been substantially more pro-Palestinian than past flare ups. 

As you can see, Israel and its advocates are guilty of many of the same tactics and narrative techniques that I criticized so fervently among Palestinians. The biggest, and most infuriating, has been the consistent denial of Palestinian identity and insistence that Jews/Israelis are the one and only true indigenous people in Israel and Palestine, and the consistent delegitimization of any Palestinian state. This attitude has no doubt played a significant role in prolonging and extending the conflict, and with it the suffering of the Palestinian people. For more details on that suffering, let us now turn to…

Israel & War Crimes

“Israel is definitely committing a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the crime of genocide,” - viv-hollande

The above statement in my previous post generated some pushback. I expected this, and planned to dedicate a whole section of the longer essay to supporting this claim, and elaborate on my meaning. Here is that. Oh, and full disclosure, this is probably the most pedantic that I am going to get in this, and I fully expect that that will piss people off for eminently understandable reasons. Nevertheless here I go. 

I would like to start by recalling the first of my establishing points: words have meanings, some words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use words with specific meanings correctly or else risk the degradation and dilution of the words themselves. Meaningless words are useless. With that out of the way: 

Genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is defined as any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five acts are: 

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting upon group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

So, we’ve clearly seen evidence of four of the five acts which potentially constitute a genocide, so why am I opposed to its use? The answer is intent. This is an issue that has been raised by others online, and the response is always a mix of a) harping on definitions while thousands of Palestinians are being murdered obscures their suffering and allows Israel to act unchallenged and b) here is the evidence that Israel intends to commit genocide. Addressing those in reverse order: 

I have seen many posts with supposed evidence of Israeli intent to commit genocide. But when they are coagulated, they look less like an actual argument and more like a conspiracy board filled with singular quotes, out-of-context statements, and tweets from some random Israeli expressing dehumanizing, borderline genocidal sentiments. I’m sorry, but this is not evidence of intent. Neither is pointing to Gaza, saying, “Look at what is going on! This clearly shows intent”. It doesn’t. Is a genocide happening in Gaza right now? Maybe. Its unsatisfying and frustrating, but intent is something that will likely be impossible to prove or disprove without access to Israeli government documents. It is classified meeting minutes that will prove or disprove intent, not tweets from Israeli bloggers. 

If you are angry at me for harping on definitions and technicalities, that’s understandable. But remember, words have meanings. I am not convinced that a genocide is happening in Gaza. But d’ya wanna know what is happening? 

War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement. Criminally disproportionate military action. Killing and targeting of journalists. Attacks on medical workers and facilities. Attacks on shelter areas. Attacks on UN workers and facilities. 

All of these are crimes. In a just world, their perpetrators would be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are barbarous acts of cruelty that should be condemned, regardless of whether or not they meet the qualifications of being an act of genocide. 

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water sources is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Involuntary detention of children without charge is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Indiscriminate bombings of civilians are crimes, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, both before and after the 7 October attacks, is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The word genocide is used on this platform like a fire alarm. Pull here to warn people about oppression and mass slaughter. But genocide, like all of the other crimes mentioned above, is a word that has a meaning, a definition. That definition is imperfect, but it is what we have to work with. Using these terms specifically and correctly is important. 

It feels sometimes that discussion around atrocities turns into a matter of genocide or nothing. People treat the usage of more accurate and specific, but ‘less severe’ terms as a form of denialism. It is that attitude that makes discussing these supposedly ‘less severe’ crimes incredibly difficult. ‘Cause guess what!

Every single one of the crimes listed above is a barbarous crime, and you should fight and condemn every last one of them with the same fervor as you should genocide. None of them are tolerable, none of them are lesser. They are, one and all, abominable acts of criminal violence. The overuse of the term genocide makes it harder to effectively fight all of the others and perpetrates a narrative, consciously or not, that its a matter of genocide or bust.

Hamas & Revolution

The Islamic Resistance Movement, more commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, is in my estimation the most militarily and politically powerful Palestinian organization in the world. Although its stated goals have changed several times over the years, Hamas has generally characterized itself as a defender of Palestinian nationalism, an advocate for Palestinian liberation, and an opponent to Israel, colonialism, and imperialism. 

Hamas is also an aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization, and every time I see expressions of support for them you should feel sick. I certainly do. 

Open expressions of support for Hamas have been rare, but far from zero. Most of those who do support Hamas uncritically accept the premise that Hamas is an anti-colonial revolutionary resistance organization fighting against Zionist occupation. This post is way too long and my deadline is rapidly approaching, so instead of breaking down all of that, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that that statement is true. Even if true, none of that prevents Hamas from also being an antisemitic, aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization. 

One of the basic assumptions of the anti-colonialist narrative is that colonized=good, colonizer=bad. This flattens nuanced and complicated conflicts and leads to the excusing and justifying of criminal acts on the basis that they were committed in pursuit of a just cause. 

Anti-colonialist struggles are justified according to the right of self-determination. Many of them nevertheless committed criminal acts. 

There is a tendency to treat conflicts, past and present, less as actual events and more like culture wars. It has become fashionable to condemn the United States by rote, to shout “Up the Ra”, without actually addressing the reality of the situation one is commenting on. As an example of what I mean, take Morocco. Last year, Morocco was briefly appointed as the symbolic standard-bearer of anti-imperialism for… winning football matches against tHe DrEaDeD cOlOnIzErS. Today, Morocco is imperialist persona non grata and traitor to the Palestinian cause. Neither of these judgments were made because of the practical, on the ground reality of decolonization, anti-imperialism, or the Palestinian cause. These judgments were made because of the narrative of anti-colonialism. If the actions of Morocco, or anyone else for that matter, work in favor of the narrative of anti-colonialism, then they are lauded. If their actions contradict that narrative, they are condemned. Are there important geopolitical implications of Morocco’s decision to support Israel in exchange for support in Western Sahara? Yes, of course. Realistically speaking, they will probably be minor and mostly symbolic. Morocco isn’t sending soldiers to help occupy Gaza, and Israel won’t be sending soldiers to support the conquest of Western Sahara. Does any of that matter to users on www.tumblr.com? No. 

To the supporters of Hamas, I don’t have a lot to say here. Hamas has been open about its antisemitism, and both Hamas leaders and official Hamas statements have openly called for genocide against Israelis, and sometimes Jews more broadly. Hamas engages in blatant conspiracism and has gleefully spread stories about a Jewish-controlled globalist shadow government trying to bring about the NWO. While they did officially amend their charter in 2017 to state that their fight is with the “Zionist enemy” rather than the Jewish people writ large, I find it difficult to believe that they are being honest with their intentions, and even if they are, the 7 October attacks show that they consider Israeli civilians as part of the “Zionist enemy” and thus fair game. 

River & Sea

In my previous post, I made the assertion that the popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is an antisemitic slogan. As I expected, I got some pushback on this, but have no fear, I have a qualified justification. 

Slightly modified, I uphold the statement that, as a practical matter, in the year 2023 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a de facto antisemitic statement. 

To fully explain what I mean here, and to address some of the confusion that I have seen with regards to the history of the statement. Shoutout to @starsakura17 and @screaming-weevil for having a conversation about the term and trying to research the history of the phrase to better inform themselves. That’s something we all, including me, should do more often on more topics. 

As far as I can discern, the origins of the “River to the sea” part of the phrase are unknown, but Zionist sentiments about creating a state between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea actually predate the First Arab-Israeli War and may predate Mandatory Palestine. The phrase first became associated with the Palestinian cause in the 1960s, when it was used to express opposition to the partition of Palestine and support for a single state in Palestine. How exactly this state was envisioned varied dramatically, but even back then, the 1964 PLO Charter expressly excluded the mostly Jewish immigrants to Palestine from their definition of Palestinians. Gee, where have I heard that before. Now, the PLO do not and did not speak for all Palestinians, and there were many Palestinians and Israelis who advocated for a single state that would be democratic and secular, thus creating a free Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thusly, if you asked me in the 1960s whether the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic, I would say no, but I would probably note that it is used by antisemites and caution you to be careful with your usage. 

However, it is no longer the 1960s, and the usage and users of the phrase have shifted over time. The most important change is the rise of Islamic militant groups, most of whom have adopted the phrase as a call to destroy Israel and purge Palestine of Israelis and/or Jews. In addition, the geopolitical landscape of Israel and Palestine has changed. In the early 1960s, when the land between the river and the sea was under total occupation by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and when the idea of a single, secular, democratic state was at least theoretically possible, non-antisemitic usage of “From the river to the sea” was both possible and fairly common. There were individuals and organizations with actual influence on both sides that could have or did try to lead the charge for this exact solution. In 2023, that is no longer the case. 

When I see people using the phrase “From the river to the sea”, my first question is how will that happen? Who will end up in charge of the land from river to sea? Remember, words have meaning, and political slogans do not exist in a vacuum. In the year 2023, there is only one organization with the political clout, popular support, and military might even hope to create a free Palestine stretching from the river to the sea: Hamas. Barring an externally imposed settlement, there is no other entity that could feasibly achieve such a state. You saw what they did on 7 October; what do you think their plan is for the rest of the Jews in Israel? 

If you object to my connection between “From the river to the sea” and Hamas ruling over the whole of Israel and Palestine, then go ahead. Tell me how, exactly, a free Palestinian state from river to sea can be created without giving Hamas free access to the people they openly want to exterminate.

Regardless of its origin, regardless of your intention when you say it, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a statement that has been proudly adopted by the most virulent and violent antisemites on the Palestinian side. Whatever its intention, it is at best a slogan with a confused and muddy history that is deeply linked with antisemitism; at worst it is incitement to genocide. 

SO STOP USING IT. Any slogan that has to be regularly qualified with “but not in an antisemitic way” is a slogan that you should not use. There are better, non-antisemitic slogans already in use; you do not need to cling desperately to this one. 

While I’m here, I may as well address the phrase “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Like “From the river to the sea”, it's a theoretically neutral or even positive slogan. However, I see it most commonly used by those who vocally support the ongoing, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza and slaughter of the people living there. Whatever your intention, this phrase is associated with those who believe that any action is justifiable as long as it might possibly kill even a single Hamas member. 

Conclusion

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, or at least a more coherent one.” - viv-hollande

If you made it this far, you have my respect. I’ve said a lot here, probably too much. I am sure it means something; I am not sure if it means anything significant. 

A lot of people are probably mad at me right now. Some of that is probably fair. Some of it is probably not. 

I had someone accuse me of being “fundamentally unserious” under my last post, which is a very weird and kind of funny thing to say to a teenager. 

I’m really struggling with how to finish this, ‘cause I am well and truly running low on steam, and I have French homework that I’ve been putting off. I’ve scrapped, like, three entire sections that I either didn’t have time to finish, or that I felt were even more poorly written than the rest of this incoherent mess. Maybe I’ll turn them into dedicated posts. 

As a final conclusion: The Israel-Palestine conflict has been saddled with millions of uninvolved rubberneckers who all seem to have a lot to say about every aspect of it. As humans tend to do, these bystanders have created narratives of war and struggle, of oppression and revolution. It is these narratives, shaped by history, but also by biases, bigotries, personal values, and misinformation. We choose a good side, and subsume that side into our own personal in-group. We excuse the faults in our allies, and exaggerate or fabricate faults in our enemies. The Palestinian cause categorically dismisses the Jewish right to a secure homeland. The de facto leaders of Gaza are aspirational génocidaires. The pro-Palestinian cause as a whole doesn’t care to consider the fate of the Israelis, millions of who were born and raised in Israel and have nowhere else to go. Simultaneously, the Israelis deny the suffering of the Palestinian people, wherever they may reside. Many current and past leaders of Israel are war criminals, and few, if any, of them will be brought to justice. Make no mistake, this is not a case of “both sides”. As the stronger party to the conflict, backed by the strongest nation on Earth, Israel has had most of the power to choose the timeline for the end to the conflict. As it stands, it seems more and more likely that that end will result in the final, irrevocable extinguishing of the dream of a Palestinian state. That end would be a tragedy, and it would be a crime. 

If you’re not sick of me telling you what to do at this point, you have the patience of a fucking saint. To those still here, I say this: condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry wherever they occur; all conflicts have long, complicated histories that get flattened by the desire to ‘pick a side’; exact language, used specifically, is a delicate, precious thing that must be safeguarded; Israel’s crimes in Gaza, whether they qualify as a campaign of genocide, rank as some of the worst committed in decades, and the western political establishment’s tacit acceptance and endorsement of that campaign of horrors is, in and of itself, criminal and immoral, and both should be fought with as much energy as you can possibly spare. 

Fuck Bibi, and all those who enable him. Fuck Hamas. Fight war crimes. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine. 

A Message To Israelis and Palestinians

I struggled the most with what to say here. As I’ve repeatedly said, this post is intended not for you, but for the crowds of virtual bystanders to the incomprehensible crimes being committed in Israel and Gaza. As someone with, as they say, no skin in the game, I feel uncomfortable addressing you in a way I generally don’t when confronting my peers. I don’t know if you want or need the perspective of yet another rubbernecker, especially when what I do have to say is so insubstantial. But I would feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people over whose heads I have been shouting for so long. So, for the final time, here goes. 

I am so sorry for what you are going through. To the Israelis, to those living in fear of rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and especially to those who lost loved ones in the 7 October attacks, or who are living in limbo hoping and praying for the release of the hostages, I express my deepest condolences. To the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have suffered the encroachment and aggression of Israeli settlers and Occupation soldiers, and who must soldier on through the ever-tightening vice of apartheid, your resilience inspires me and your suffering devastates me. To the Palestinian refugees, who have been driven out of their homeland and now must wait endlessly for a return that may never come, please know that you are in my heart.  And finally to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to years of indignity, abuse, and violence, who have endured overwhelming, disproportionate, and indiscriminate retaliation for every terrorist provocation, who have been starved, bombed, shot, beaten, and brutalized in ways that I, sheltered as I am, could never possibly imagine, and who are at this very moment deep in mourning over the thousands and thousands of parents, children, siblings, cousins, friends, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, acquaintances, colleagues, and everything in between, I offer you have my most sincere apologies and my grief at your losses, pale as they must be in comparison to your own. I don’t know if they’ll help, but they’re really all I’ve got. 

I wish I could offer you hope. I wish I could offer you a solution. I wish I could do something, anything, that would actually have a meaningful impact on any of this. But I can’t. I’m sorry.

[anistarrose]

Hey, I'm trying to be more conscientious about putting image descriptions on the things I'm posting and I was wondering if it's better to have them as a separate text or in the alt text embedded in the image? Thanks for your help!

thank you so much for asking! I'm always happy to talk about this — so happy that my replies get pretty long, in fact — so skip to the bottom if you just wants some examples.

short answer: either is better than none, but both is actually the most accessible to people with different needs.

long answer: there's pros and cons to each. a lot of people who use primarily screen readers like alt text because it's read out immediately, and don't have to hear "image image image" for comics or whatnot before getting to the description, nor mistakenly skip a post because they can't tell yet that it's described. however, tumblr in particular has two problems:

glitch where alt text occasionally fails to save in a draft or gets deleted on reblogs

bad options for displaying alt text directly, which impacts (among others) low-vision people who would want to read alt text with enlarged font, in order to take in details of the image they can't make out by sight (unless using XKit Rewritten's AccessKit, which I will always recommend, but that's not an option for mobile users)

there's also an argument that IDs being invisible to most sighted people doesn't do much to encourage, educate, or remind people to include them, tbh.

so what can you do? one option is to include the same alt text as image description (placing the ID directly under the image, because remember, flow for screen readers is important). I like to lead with "ID from alt," in order to clarify to screen reader users that they can skip the ID, and help differentiate it from the other option I'm about to describe. this should be intuitive, but here's a random example where I did this for a text post meme (link).

option two is to include a short description in the alt text, and a more detailed explanation in-post. this can let screen reader users instantly know that the post is described, and decide whether they're interested in it, but it maintains an in-post description for others to benefit from too. here's an example of me doing this in a post about IDs (link), and here's an example of my mutual describing art like this (link).

are either of these options objectively perfectly correct? no, but few guidelines for IDs really are. the only things I'll add are to not use small text, italics, colored text, etc in image descriptions, since those can induce readability issues for low vision folks. no read mores either, for obvious reasons (annoying and glitchy). as far as I know, indents are fine, and some people like those to make the IDs more visually differentiable.

again, thank you so much for asking! I hope this helps, and it means a lot that you're working on writing more IDs!

[corrodedbisexual]

Greetings !! Im really sorry for being this direct! I know times are tough and I might sound desperate but I’m hoping that you would be so kind to please boost/share the post I pinned for my cat who needs urgent help as we are trying to raise some funds for her needs if you have some time to spare, It would be so meaningful to me as I’m praying it would reach more people and gain traction at the same time, please 💔🙏 praying you’d consider, and pls kindly send me a msg for a response or answer my ask privately so I could atleast thank you for doing us favor 🥹🫶🏽

Greetings. Sorry, I won't. And I wouldn't advise anybody else who gets your message to do that, based on 2 things:

You're not my actual follower, you just followed me 10 minutes ago to send this ask. I would do this for anyone who's been following me a while, no hesitation, but you just got here. And this site is filled to the brink with bots and scammers.

You quite literally just got here. Your blog was made 21 hours ago (or at least, that's the time of your earliest post). You are not a regular tumblr user.

If your cat really was in trouble, you'd be asking on a social network you actually use regularly, where you have friends and followers willing to help. I don't get the idea of making a new tumblr profile and begging strangers for reblogs.

There is a small chance that I might be mistaken, but I've seen this pattern way too often. Person makes a realistically looking tumblr, reblogs a bunch of random stuff so their blog isn't empty and outright sus, and immediately starts asking for money.

Edit: After going to the url's tag, I'm pleased to confirm my instincts were correct. PSA: DO NOT DONATE TO THIS PERSON, THIS IS 100% A SCAM. Among other people's warnings, I found this absolute gem that I've been laughing about for 5 minutes now. LITERALLY HOW DUMB ARE YOU, DUDE. You realize tumblr has a search function, right?!

[mx-piggy]

Almost forgot it was new Futurama day until I came across a post about it. Thank you, random Tumblr user. Spoilers ahead!!

I hadn't really expected much from Related to Items You've Viewed, and it was probably one of the episodes I had the least excitement for. But, I really was pleasantly surprised! It's not in my top 10 Futurama episodes of all time, but it's pretty strong on the whole compared to the other episodes of this revival. I can definitely see people not liking it by virtue of the fact it's basically 'the Amazon episode' (not to be confused with the Amazonian Women episode, Amazon Women in the Mood) and plenty of fans will go into it not wanting to like it, but I personally came out of it thinking it was pretty decent! With the last topical episode (the crypto episode), I saw some people on here dislike it just because it was 'about crypto' and they were like 'crypto episode bad', because they equate topicality with being bad, even if the way the episode did it was pretty unique and clever. And, it's valid not to like something. But, some people on here have such unnuanced opinions it's kinda laughable.

Like I said, I think everything about it- story, humour, sci-fi concept, characters- are all very strong, compared to, say, Children of a Lesser Bog, that was very strong character-wise but had some story issues at the beginning, or the Impossible Stream, which had some really funny jokes but had a sci-fi premise I found kind of boring.

Admittedly, I'm only vaguely familiar with Amazon and the poor treatment of its workers, but I think this was a decent commentary on it; if you're more informed about this kind of thing, feel free to correct me. Even if Amazon and the invasive nature of our devices is kind of an overdone thing and seems kind of late to be seen as fresh in a 2023 Futurama episode, I still think it simultaneously worked as a story within the Futurama universe as well, if that makes sense? Like, even if it is meant to be a commentary on Amazon, I think you could watch it without having much knowledge about Amazon and it still works as a Futurama story, too? No idea if I've articulated that in a way that makes sense (I tried!) I think that the sci-fi premise of the warehouse being able to expand on its own was pretty neat and worked with the commentary they were making.

Outside of the Amazon stuff, the story was pretty standard but it was still enjoyable, at least for me as a Freela fan. It's great to see the writers committing to Fry and Leela's relationship, and I think it was natural for them to do a story about Bender being jealous of them (I'm also a Freeler fan, if you couldn't tell). I think it was fun for them to go and rescue Bender from the Momazon warehouse, and I like that, throughout the episode, the characters really do care about one another. Fry being so concerned about Bender was really sweet.

I think these really nice character relationships elevates this revival over a lot of the episodes in the Comedy Central revival, which, at times, felt pretty mean-spirited. I really like how this revival is very sincere in the character relationships it protrays.

My only major issue with the episode is the fact that I don't think Mom had as big of a presence as she did in the original run, and she felt under-utilised. I wished we'd gotten an interaction between her and the Professor- I love their dynamic and it felt odd that they didn't really interact. I'm hoping that we get to see more of her because she's one of my favourite recurring characters, and I'd love to see them build on the reveal in Bender's Game that the Professor is Igner's father.

But, that's a very minor issue! The episode was really funny, had some really good character dynamics, and I really liked the sci-fi premise! Also, I adore the Moon setting as a fan of the Series Has Landed, so it was neat to see that again, as well as the Luna Park mascot. Also, shout-out to the Moon conservative and his three robot daughters.

There are so many good jokes in this episode I won't list my favourites this time.

Overall, I think this might be my second favourite episode of this season, with first place going to Children of a Lesser Bog (which I adore despite those expositional issues that I've complained about every week since lmao). That said, I'm really prepared to enjoy episode six, because Johnny 2 Cellos said on his podcast with Toonirific Tariq (Cartoons that Curse; go check it out if you haven't already) it was his favourite episode of the revival out of the first six episodes (he had early access to them all) and I trust that man's Futurama opinions. After my disappointment with Parasites Regained, it feels really good to be so positive about this episode!

[ask-giovanni-and-ghetsis]

[Back where it all started..]

After God knows how many years, I finally decided to make this blog return from the dead with the hope to be active in here. With that, I also reopened the "Ask & Roleplay Box", so ya'll are free to send questions and RP requests. Still, I'd like to point out a few rules which I'd be really grateful if you followed them, so there won't be any misunderstandings + we're all gonna have fun 👌🏻

[So let's get started, shall we?]

If you want to write something that's only related to roleplaying, please write "[RP] (to Giovanni / Ghetsis / Giovanni & Ghetsis)" in every request you're sending me, so I'll know that it's meant for roleplay purposes only. If you want to ask a question on the other hand, please write "[Ask] (to Giovanni / Ghetsis / Giovanni & Ghetsis)

OCs are allowed of course, same goes for already existing / canonical characters. It'd be still great to tell me your OCs name in the request, so I'll know how to call them + use the correct pronouns, etc.

THE ROLEPLAY & ASK OPTION IS ONLY MEANT FOR "POKÉMON" / POKÉMON RELATED CHARACTERS & CONTENT! I DON'T DO CROSSOVERS OR INCLUDE CHARACTERS, OCs AND SO ON FROM OTHER GAMES, MOVIES AND WHATSOEVER!

I can imagine that I might perhaps get RP requests from many other people, so "Ongoing roleplays" can and most likely will be delayed in time. I don't want anybody to feel ignored or left out, so please be tolerant and respectful towards others & keep in mind that I want to give every single one of you the same amount of attention.

I only do the roleplay thing on this blog & ONLY via the ask option. I never use the direct messages here on Tumblr, so I'm just letting you know that I'm not available here for private RPs, especially not via DMs.

I'll reply the way I wish to reply and also the way how I imagine Giovanni & Ghetsis to act. I'm well aware that probably everyone of us has their own imagination of these two, so please keep in mind that I'm portraying them in my own way & the way I enjoy roleplaying as them. (Scroll down to find a list of how I imagine Giovanni & Ghetsis to act, including a few headcanons). If you may eventually not like my way of portraying them, then you're of course free to feel that way but PLEASE DO NOT use the roleplay / ask option for hate! Also PLEASE DON'T hate on other users who might enjoy this & interact with this blog! 🙏🏻

I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE IF I'M NOT ABLE TO REPLY IMMEDIATELY TO ALL OF YOUR MESSAGES. APART FROM TUMBLR I STILL DO HAVE A PRIVATE LIFE WITH DAILY TASKS LIKE WORK ETC, SO I'M NOT REGULARLY ACTIVE! I'M JUST LETTING YOU KNOW THAT I'M GOING TO REPLY WHENEVER I HAVE THE TIME TO DO SO OR WHEN I FEEL LIKE DOING SO! THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING & PLEASE BARE WITH ME ❤️

⚠️ We all know the rules & guidelines here on Tumblr. So please follow them. I DO NOT interact with people who use topics like: Racism, pedophilia, homophobia, transphobia, misogynistic or mysandric stuff, body-shaming, sexual content etc. ⚠️

I apologize if my English grammar is whack sometimes because it's not my first language 🙈

[That's all for the rules. The following are some notes about my version of Gio & Dennis Ghetsis, including their personalities and some headcanons]

Giovanni:

Dude has class. Not only a successful and feared crime lord but also a swaggelicious Italian gentleman. Don't mistake his polite attitude for kindness, tho.

This man has a lot of patience. Like damn.. Not surprised because he hangs out with Ghetsis after all but even someone like Gio has his limits. He's not easy to anger or to annoy because he mostly either plays things down or straight forward ignores stuff that gets on his nerves but breh, Italian ranting intensifies once he snaps.

If you want to trigger him, just remind him of how often he got his butt kicked by random 10 year olds and I'm sure he'll want to see you dead sooner or later :)

Quite sarcastic & has a dry sense of humor. Definitely laughs at your misery when you struggle with the Silph Co. warp tiles in Saffron City.

Enjoys smoking cigars. Perhaps not that kind of a heavy-a$$ chainsmoker like my OC (Some of you might remember her lol) but whenever he's relaxing, he clearly does so with a cigar & a nice glass of scotch.

Biggest workaholic in history. It's 2am and you want him to go to sleep? No. He's still busy with whatever the hell he's doing (probably doing the casual evil stuff because "Mimimi, I'm SO evil, brb gotta think about more crimes to commit")

Can probably shoot someone who's hiding behind a random tree with his eyes closed because ✨ mafia boss ✨

Smug, charming bastard. He's Italian, so I'm not surprised about his intriguing vibes, lol. He can be quite flirty if he wants to be.

[LITTLE NOTE HERE: I don't mind if the asks or RPs might get a little "flirty" but PLEASE NOT DIRTY! Sure, we all may or may not have a dirty mind here and there but NO +18 & NSFW CONTENT in here 🙏🏻 I don't have a problem with some innuendos or whatever but we know Tumblr's rules: NO PORN. PERIOD.]

Ghetsis:

Just talk about a complete disaster.. I believe we all know that this guy has issues. He's clearly the one who's just here because Giovanni convinced him, yet he hates everyone & everything, including his life after the events of BW2.

Cold, f*cker.. Like srsly. If you manage that he acknowledges your presence (and heaven behold if he even ends up being sorta nice to you) then you must have Arceus' blessings, because usually he only has two moods: He either treats people as if they're dead or he makes sure they ARE dead. Especially when you push his buttons.

His ego is bigger than Celesteela or other huge-a$$ Pokémon. You want a selfish, egotistical, self-centered, manipulative, arrogant & overconfident megalomaniac who believes he has no flaws at all? He's your man then.

Grumpy & easily annoyed by literally EVERYTHING. He thankfully has calmed down a lot (more or less) because Gio forced him to have anger management classes but he's still like a ticking time bomb. He may be chill but the next second he can also try to randomly strangle you for breathing in his presence.

"I HAVE NO SON!!!¡¡11"

Also sarcastic as hell & laughs at anyone who died to his (hacked) Hydreigon. Probably also that type of guy who trips people in the hallway just for fun.

Can also be surprisingly charming and intriguing but I swear to everything that's dear to me DON'T fall for it.. He knows what to say to make people believe or trust him. If he says that he cares, there's rather a 99,9% chance that he actually doesn't.

"I'm a heartless, evil wretch!" (He isn't wrong, tho lol) Totally a Tsun at some point as well

Dennis. Just DENNIS.. 🙃

[k1ttygam3r]

Hi there, trust you are having great Monday Morning, and here is wishing a fruitful week ahead. I'm a victim of abuse from my grandmother and dad, I don't want to go too much into detail, as it's highly triggering, i worked on getting some evidence to press charge against them(going well so far) but i need to move out of the house of my abusers as soon as possible and seek justice. I need all the help i can get (please see my pinned post for my frequently updated "beg-post"). I beseech(beg of) you to donate towards my moving/getting justice if you can. Also, if you can, please consider boosting my pinned post (a detailed beg-post)(if you have already seen my post somehow before now, there's been a recent development/progress)- that will help reach more potential helpers. please don't ignore me, please!. I'm open to suggestions/corrections, you can send an inbox/ direct message if you have concerns/questions, and i will answer in no time. Thank you for hearing me out.

I am unable to help by donating, but I hope you get the help you need. However I have a suggestion; stop with the inbox self-promotion, please? The only people on Tumblr who go into random Tumblr user inboxes to promote their pinned posts are scammers and you’re not really helping people in understanding that you’re probably not one of those.

[nearo]

OKAY DONT MIND ME BUT i wass going through the reblogs on the smarklf post and noticed urs . im not usually one to bother random strangerss on the internet with corrections, but this iss actually one of my favorite facts so i hope u dont mind lmao--

the earth doesnt get seasons from the distance to the sun! that barely affects it at all actually! its coss of the tilt. check it out

(i have no idea how to turn that into 17 fantasy seasons though. youd have to get into air currents, or like, put more suns in the solar system. or make everything happen via gods, which lets you do whatever you want)

ok thats it have a great day random tumblr user

No wait hey that's cool, thanks for the ask

[goatsgomoo]

Ah, thanks for responding!

I saw your tags, and 100% no worries, I really enjoy having discussions on such topics (and I'll freely admit to my statistics knowledge being rather rusty!)

There are a few things you said I think are worth responding to (and please take this in the same spirit as your response -- a friendly academic discussion that contains disagreements):

Benford's Law applies to large sets of randomly occurring numbers. While the number of blogs and therefore number of follower counts may fit the "large" criteria, "randomly occurring" is a bit harder to argue for.

I don't think "randomly occurring" is really a useful (or correct) phrase here. Measured values may match up with a particular distribution, but those values and the overall distribution have causes. "Randomly occurring" is vague in that it doesn't specify the distribution; for instance, values randomly sampled from a uniform or normal distribution would not follow Benford's law. Benford's law applies best when values are uniformly distributed across orders of magnitude, and is relevant for things that are definitely not random: municipality population counts or a company's transaction amounts for example.

The 730-2187 option has a higher percentage of respondents than the 244-729 option because, of course, it has a higher range of values. As for the 82-243 option? Newer/Reblog only/Infrequently active/Whatever blogs combined with the recent influx of Tumblr users blown in from Twitter make up a good chunk of the site, and I think it's reasonable to assume that such blogs (like me!) have a small yet comfortable amount of followers.

244-729 has a higher range of values than 82-243, so I'm not sure 730-2187 having a higher range of values than 244-729 really explains much.

Though the bit about Twitter influx users is an interesting idea! It definitely makes sense that follower count is somewhat correlated with time spent on the platform, and I understand that there were a significant number of users who joined around the same time, so that could definitely impact the overall distribution.

But in the end, I think we're just running into the limitations of using tumblr polls to collect this data:

We do not have the actual precise data points before determining how to group them, so we cannot really come up with useful groupings.

We are not getting a representative sample (here's where randomness comes in: there is absolutely no randomness in who responds to the polls, just follower connections and personal decisions to respond or not), so even if we had all the precise follower counts from each respondent, we still wouldn't really have an idea of the true distribution of tumblr user follower counts.

So there are all sorts of unknown variables that potentially contribute to the shape of the distribution and how that distribution will appear in a given grouping of 10 ranges.

If Benford's law does apply to the underlying/true data, that may not be reflected in the collected values (since there is definitely some amount of sampling bias) or may be hidden by the way values are grouped.

And if Benford's law does not apply, sampling bias or the way values are grouped may erroneously cause one to think it applies!

Anyway, for what it's worth, I would expect Benford's law to apply to Tumblr follower counts, but there is not really a way to determine that reliably. Although I guess I could do something like create a poll that asks for the first digit of your follower count, and just handwave away any sampling bias. That is, if I could create polls.

[trinskia]

Hello wandering Tumblr user!

My name is Trinskia and welcome to my little world. I'm an artist who specializes in drawing anatomically correct stick figures simply because I have beef with hair. I would also write at random times to cure my boredom.

My main focus is an original work of mine called 'A Place Of No Peace', also known as 'APONP'. I also do fanart/fanfics at random times if the content interests me.

I will draw/write gore, horror or suggestive content from time to time, so please be careful when exploring my blog.

I do not support nor endorse any of the heinous acts I depict the characters doing.

Also a little note: I do not support the LGBTQ community, but I do not support nor endorse the idea of threatening and attacking them. So, if you're a part of the community, I will respect you and your choices as long as you respect my boundaries when it comes to the queer theme.

Art requests: CLOSED

Writing requests: CLOSED

Asks: OPEN

Art requests/commissions:

For now, I do not have any interest in doing commissions, but I do like to do requests.

I would open my requests at random with 5-10 ask limits. You may freely ask me at any time anything about my original content or my headcanons for characters of fandoms I'm in.

If ever you decide to send me an art request, be informed that it'll take a while for me to do it due to certain events in my life, so please be patient.

Now onto the restrictions of your request.

Will do:

-Gore [not too graphic]

-Creepy stuff

-Oc art

-Sketches

[I will accept requests of queer characters, but I will not draw them kissing or flirting as I'm uncomfortable with it, but I will do hand holding/ hugging]

Won't do:

-Underage shipping

-Suggestive stuff [I'm fine with my own art thank you very much]

-Fully rendered artwork [this is a free request, not a paid commission]

-complex requests.

______________________________

Writing requests

Yes, I do write and yes, I will write for your OC's or a character of your choice.

You can also add prompts to your request if you like.

Will do:

-OCs (queer characters included.)

-Shipping (if it's one of the fandoms I'm in or if I like said pairing)

- (maybe) Yandere [no graphic details]

Won't do:

-Suggestive

- Child character x older character (unless platonic)

______________________________

Introducing my original content (have yet to attach the links since I'm lazy.)

................

A Place Of No Peace

Our protagonist, known as Grape, explores and survives in an unfortunate reality where things that shouldn't have existed do. He, his brother and his friends fight against hordes upon hordes of grotesque creatures that wish harm upon them.

However, when an entity decided to interfere with Grape's life, Grape found himself descending from the light he protected. He believed he was going to meet a fate worse than death.....or was he?

Characters and Description:

Light characters

Dark characters

................

ASCENSION LABS

[This is a part of APONP, but their story and importance was too precious to simply ignore]

Welcome to ASCENSION LABS!

We are a team of researchers whose goal is to inform the citizens of our world about all the dangers that lurk right outside of their home. There are many files and documents we have composed that will assist you in the understanding of our reality and all the bizzare things existing in here.

Staff

Information documents

The Journal of Hope

................

Mystic Isles [on Hiatus]

A magical place where things of fantasy thrive. You were introduced to the natives of these isles as a new species and was told to explore the vast landscape.

As you continued to explore however, the once happy facade of the place seems to fall apart.

Characters and Description

______________________________

Fandoms I'm in (request purposes):

Animator vs Animation

Animation vs Minecraft

[ximain]

dazai's plan for the prison break

why did Dazai choose Sigma for his prison break plan? <HEAVY SPOILERS for c98>

1. Sigma's ability

to start off, I have a confession to make. so.. I forgot sigma had an ability. even thought he didn't have one. it's not talked about much, but his is the ability to "exchange information with anyone he touches. The exchange consists of "giving" the person information they want to know and thus giving Sigma the information he wants to know." (source: bsd wiki)

2. previous use of Sigma's ability

in chapter 58, Sigma's ability was utilised to steal information from Chief Taneda. (on a side note, Taneda's ability allows him to know Sigma's ability, which is why we even know how any of this works. dazai probably knows about this through Ango) The information stolen was about the location of a page of The Book, which was used to frame the ADA thereafter.

"They've used my knowledge to steal a certain page." [Taneda, chap 58]

Another instance is Atsushi's unintentional use of Sigma's ability. We know Atsushi received information on the identity of Kamui, but what information Sigma received on the other end is still unknown.

"Those memories I got from Sigma, Kamui's drive to kill, that sword was one used by the Hunting Dogs." [Atsushi, chap 83]

3. nullification of Sigma's ability

with the release of chapter 98, we had the fandom going crazy over either the #vamp!chuuya panel or the #sigzai panel. personally, I hyped over the dance panel because it was... easy to colour. but knowing dazai, seemingly comedic scenes of his never exist for the sole purpose of being comedic. (flashback to that "i need to pee" scene) thus, I made the assumption that this 'dance' had some other purpose to it, and came to the conclusion that.. Dazai was trying to nullify Sigma's ability.

4. why?

I'd be extremely grateful to anyone who can find the exact quote in the bsd manga, but basically dazai (or a random tumblr user) said:

"in a battle where both sides have an equal amount of information, the side who makes the more unpredictable move wins."

I believe dazai and fyodor to have roughly the same amount of intel on the current situation. since Sigma is doa's source of info (excluding the person on the outside fyodor communicates with), the purpose of ability nullification would be to block any future attempts of fyodor getting info out of sigma. this theory does seem a little shaky as we: don't know how fyodor makes sigma tell? him anything, he also thought sigma was dead before 98. would fyodor use his ability to tap onto sigma's ability? how does fyodor's ability work?

I have no idea, and neither does Dazai. but Sigma may know.

regarding the question posed right at the very start of this post, I'd like us to ask ourselves: is it information, or military might (aka gravity manipulation) that decides the outcome of a battle?

ok thanks bye..

I wasn't very sure where to post this, so it goes to my main :)) Thanks for reading, just wanted to get this out of my head before the next chapter comes out... like tmr? if you write any posts that are similar to this or talk about sigma's ability or sth, TAG ME. if you want to correct any facts in this post, TAG ME.

[commence-screaming]

omg hi thanks so much for the warm welcome! so glad there's other people who enjoy the weird image of payday i have in my head... would be more than happy to chat and share ideas with everyone uwu

Yes you’re welcome! I guess I’ll give you the grand tour. WARNING: maybe finish the storyline before clicking on any of these people, haha. View at your own discretion, my post doesn’t have any spoilers but the ppl themselves do!!

Hhhhhh and if any of this is wrong, please feel free to correct me.

First I’ll introduce myself…

Herro, I’m DesBea! (Ao3) or des-paa-cee-toeee, or commence. I arrived in the fandom almost 4 months ago, now I’m a resident Bain stan,, (my friends call me a simp and it’s true)

I write angst and sometimes fluff. I draw a lot but it’s all spoilers, come to think of it ALL MY WRITING IS TOO. I love metaphors and pronouns, they’re so cool. Also IMPORTANT: I have a noodle brain and I’m forgetful, please be patient with me I’m tryin—

I started off on PS4, (I don’t recommend that)

I’m Infamy VII on PC right now and am willing to help users here on tumblr if they message me! If you’re doing Career I’m more than happy to oblige?? (That would be my fourth time playing through the whole thing)

I might’ve accidentally converted the PAYDAY tumblr fandom into really liking Bain, oops. I’m not sorry though.

Now for other people:

Me telling ppl about angst fic concepts

@artcupcakes or AC! Does some headcanons and is just a nice person to interact with. I think AC’s pronouns are she/her? Ships WolfHox, MasterGuide/NaviMind and uhhhh wait that’s all, right? I think I saw her tag Houston/Chains once, don’t quote me on that. Part of the SNEAKY TAGGING SQUAD. Stans Duke.

Very talented artist and is making a good foray into writing! She likes being asked questions (though I think we all do?) and has a bunch of motivation to do everything. I talk to her and she’s amazing, VERY COOL.

(accidentally tricked her into shipping Bain with Dallas, oops… I don’t even write rrooommancceee)

@what-yadoking-likes or Yado! FUNNY PERSON. The screenshots I took makes it seem as if she’s a major Bain stan, not really though I just thought it was funny. Only writes and rarely draws but like. The best writer out of all of us;; she’s so good at describing things what?? She put her skill points into being an author! Knows more lore than I do.

Does the most random headcanons… very popular for GOOD REASON, she’s great!! Ships WolfHox, MasterGrinder and sometimes MasterGuide/NaviMind.

(OOPS OOPS I dropped my Bain headcanons sorry— wait you ship them more now? Is this because of me???)

@hoxooster or I call him Hoxo! Very talkative and usually reblogs other people’s posts! He’s one of the Payday content regulars, and I find myself super engrossed in the real life stories he tells in his tags. Hoxo has a penchant for relating posts to experiences he’s had and wow. Also talks a lot, VERY NICE TO HOLD CONVERSATIONS WITH.

LOLLLL okay I got permission to tag this dude so here he is. @existentialcrisisetcetera or Bandit reached out to me a couple weeks ago because they liked all the spoiler ANGST ASKS I gave to AC.

Don’t let these screenshots fool you, they like angst TOO like me?? A WEIRDO. (affectionate) Does better metaphors than everyone I’ve met like WOAHHHH. Is the type of person to cry and then immediately go “body horror? favorite trope :3”

Doesn’t post Payday stuff, but is a very awesome supporter and I appreciate them. Also likes Bain so that’s a plus in my book. (actually I think we all do after those asks/detailed posts I did, not including the next person because—)

@bainposting spoilers everywhere for this dude, BUT. Apparently has been stanning Bain for all alone for years. If you find a stray voice line tag kaz and send it over to them(?) bad memory I forget pronouns. Also will do random text posts like the second pic. Really funny.

Anyway, welcome! I’m super biased towards my DUDE and have only been here for a little while so. There’s more people like s-w-a-n and jacket-enjoyer but I’m shy and don’t want to tag people that I haven’t interacted with too much ; ; sorry you guys.