#that's the objective fact. not subjective.

[idliketobeatree]

dead boy detectives characters as art objects and sculptures; extended ---

hello, i remembered i made some subjective explanations and notes on few of my choices for this post, and i thought some folks might enjoy it. soo let's get into it.

1.

monty finch

author: anders krisár

pretty self-explanatory; it's a moulded male torso with visible inprints on its skin.

anders krisár’ artistry explores the themes of loss, separation, and the condition of the psyche through the lens of a human body in duality: perfectionism meets unsettlement, skin meets marble and bronze and polyester, to create sculptures spanning geological time far beyond the living's capabilities.

monty's creation by esther was already stripped of any human agency. "he was made a boy, not a person", small, almost doll-sized, with a singular purpose: to seduce and entice the chosen dead boy into their doom. the naked skin and specifically the position of its arms are mildly erotic, but in a way that makes your skin crawl. the imprints are intimate, placed possesive; notice the thumbs digging close to especially sensitive areas like nipples and the belly button.

the latter seems to connect the "creator" to the subject, the navel here as a symbol of cruel, invasive motherhood. the fact that the torso is cut off in the middle and at the neck furthers the uncanny valley feeling of a young male body, but then again. this is a realistic portrayal. so was it ever a person? what does it have inside to make dents so profound? how deep you can press until it breaks?

--- i'm leaving out crystal and edwin (for now?), but @nicheoverhere brilliantly noticed that it was the same author for both. that was intentional! because glen martin taylor is all about taking kintsugi, which is a beautiful art form of repairing fine china and generally delicate things with veins of precious metals, but with materials like— nails. scissors. barbed wire. all ugly. the repair after a great shattering is seldom pretty after all, they really are similar in this regard. ---

2.

charles rowland

author: robert hudson

okay, strap in. this funky dreamy world belongs to robert hudson, and i picked it for charles rowland because it's all first impressions. the colours? the composition? they give you the 80s vibes, almost; like something a kid would design if you asked them what a time machine would look like. it could probably move in several ways. the pieces seem mismatched, but hold themselves together surprisingly well. or maybe you underestimate it?

it's neither big nor small. you can't tell its size at all. it's a bit overwhelming to look at, at first, and at second, and after a while, but it carries that comfortable familiarity and nostalgia for— well, nothing in particular, because the longer you look, the sadder its past seems. the bold pops of contrasting colour are fighting for your attention. they want you to like it! and yet, the major material seems to be just. rusted steel. made from tools.

and look at that botched up sphere, it wants so badly to be a perfect sphere and it knows it'll never be one. fine!! perhaps it could be a football ball instead! or maybe a head. if you close your eyes, that is. and this facing-up horseshoe? a lucky charm, made to collect good luck and keep it from falling out cause god, it needs it.

---

3.

niko sasaki

author: justin cloud

---

niko sasaki, now how do i describe her? let's start by saying— she's cleary a her. this one is a she. and there's something to be said about blooming, and femininity, and delicacy, because pink is a hopeful girly colour and a surprise and a delight.

what are you doing in a gallery, little flower, shouldn't you be at home? in a field? look how pretty you are! mind you, of course there's something wrong with her as well, but you're not sure if that is because someone messed it up, or because of a different entity alltogether. was it always half-electric? its elegance seems purposeful— the iridescent metal fits all too well with the white-pink petals— but also uncanny. and oh suddenly you can't stop looking at the stigma from which a pollen should release aaany time now.

when i look at her, at her black artificial stem and the small leaves imitating the real ones, i wonder if she doesn't want to lure me into a trap. is it her fault?

the beautiful petals seem like the only thing left real of the flower. whichever way she turns, it will probably mean— death. and flowers are ephemeral. what is a flower mounted to a wall, fortified with steel, connected with cables and enfused with electrical energy, then?

i think she's a self-preserving survivor. ---

4.

the night nurse

author: elizabeth turk

---

now. the night nurse.

of course it's the only piece in the collection where the background needed to be dark. no one here is older than her. there is no inoffensive, fading-into-background white for this absolute pillar of truth. or maybe something like a totem, quite protective in nature. and it's terrifying, 'cause you're immediately hit with the feeling that you're looking at something out of this realm, something you're not supposed to witness. the perspective is all wrong. is it downwards or upwards? why does it seem unstable when the pieces are so perfectly centered and seemingly well-balanced? child, you should calm down, it's not like you will destroy it with a stronger puff of air. will you?

this sculpture is called "tipping point — echoes of extinction", and it's actually a mix of technology and sculpture and sound, with elegant visualizations of the lost voices of birds and sea mammals. the author said it "was conceived in reverence to the astounding lives the species which envelop humans have lived and the mysterious ways they have contributed to our well-being. the shadows of their memory, whether a shape or a sound, have inspired this project." so the piece deals with death. moreover, it deals with murder. it records the harsh reality and makes sure the ones that suffered horribly at the hands of humans are, in a way, celebrated. but also— categorised. like epitaphs. the birdsong, once a living sign, is only visually represented by the lines of varying lenghts in 3D, and you can do nothing about it anymore, right, you can't bring back the dead, you can't help the innocent dying in any way other than— stacking them on top of each other and moving on.

---

so that's for now, i might someday write more if anyone's curious. :")

[girlactionfigure]

the British

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

For many years, there has been a concerted effort to delegitimize the State of Israel as a British colonial project. These people decontextualize one single paragraph-long, non-binding statement -- the 1917 Balfour Declaration -- and ignore everything that happened before and since. 

The fact of the matter is that by the time the British actually occupied the territory that now encompasses the State of Israel and the Palestinian Territories, they actively worked with the Arabs against the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. 

Anyone familiar with the complicated history of the conflict beyond the same tired propaganda talking points knows this. Our own grandparents know this, because it was they who suffered under British curfews, detention camps, unfair laws, and more.

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION: IN CONTEXT

In 1897, at the First Zionist Congress, the Zionist movement decided that “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz ­Israel [the Land of Israel] secured under public law.” In other words, the Zionist movement sought to accomplish its goals through legal means, rather than through violence. To do this, the Zionists tried lobbying a number of world powers, most significantly, the Ottomans, who then ruled over what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories. They were unsuccessful. In fact, the Ottoman Empire tightened its anti-Jewish restrictions in the Land of Israel in response.

Meanwhile, as the Ottoman Empire weakened, a number of Indigenous religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East, as well as the Arabs, began vying for their own independence. This was especially true during World War I, after it was revealed that the British and the French had conspired to take over the spoils of the vast Ottoman Empire once the Ottomans were defeated. Other groups that made public -- though ultimately unsuccessful -- bids for sovereignty included the Assyrians and the Kurds. In other words, given the context of the period and the region, Zionism was not an anomaly, but rather, it fell in line with what other national groups were doing at the time.

In 1916, the British promised the Arabs a unified Arab state in Greater Syria, which included what is now Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Turkey. A year later, in 1917, the British signed the Balfour Declaration, supporting the establishment of a “Jewish national home,” which, in the eyes of the Arabs, contradicted the promise the British had made just the previous year.

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

WHAT WAS THE BALFOUR DECLARATION?

The Balfour Declaration was a statement issued in 1917 by the British government supporting the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. 

There are two important things to keep in mind: (1) in 1917, Palestine was not yet under British rule; thus, the British had no actual power to assign it to anyone, and (2) by the time the British were given administrative powers over Palestine, they’d already changed their tune in favor of the Arab aspirations. It’s also important to note that the Balfour Declaration never specified the exact nature of this “national home for the Jewish people,”and, as such, the British felt that this promise did not actually contradict the earlier promise they had made to the Arabs in 1916 regarding a unified Arab state in Greater Syria. 

The causes for the Balfour Declaration are subject to speculation. Some historians believe the British wanted to reward Chaim Weizmann, one of the most active proponents for a Jewish state, for producing acetone, which was critical to the British war effort during World War I. Others believe the British were desperate for the Americans to enter World War I, and because they held the antisemitic view that Jews had a great deal of power over the American government, they thought that in rewarding the Jews, the Jews would reward them. Others claim Lord Balfour was a Christian Zionist -- not to be confused with a Christian who is a Zionist -- and he felt that the returning of the Jews to the Land of Israel would hasten the Second Coming of Jesus. Finally, others think the British “embraced” Zionism because they felt that it would justify their colonization of Palestine over the French colonization of Palestine, as the French were also vying for control of that strip of land.

BRITISH RESPONSE TO ARAB VIOLENCE

British rule over Palestine was characterized by appeasement to -- and oftentimes outright support for -- the Arabs, even when the Arabs carried out antisemitic massacres against the Jews. After the 1920 Nebi Musa pogrom in Jerusalem, for example, the Jews accused the British of complicity, as they had actively prevented the Jews in the Old City from getting help. In fact, it was this riot that led to the formation of the Haganah, the first Zionist paramilitary in Mandatory Palestine, as the Zionist movement realized that the British could not -- or were not willing to -- protect the Jewish population of Palestine.

In 1936, the Arab Higher Committee, the Arab leadership in Mandatory Palestine, called for a general strike and boycott of Jewish products. This quickly escalated into violence and terrorism, leading to the massacre of some 500 Jews and hundreds of British. Due to their inadequacy in protecting the Jewish population, once again, the British reluctantly agreed to arm the Haganah.

In 1937, the British issued the Peel Commission to investigate the causes of unrest in Palestine. The investigators decided that partitioning the land into one Jewish state and one Arab state was the best option -- putting partition on the table for the first time. The Jews agreed to the plan reluctantly -- the terms weren’t great, though Chaim Weizmann said the Zionist movement was prepared to accept a state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth” -- but the Arabs rejected it vehemently. Wishing to appease the Arabs, the British immediately discarded the 1937 Peel Plan and instead rewarded the Arab perpetrators of the violence with the 1939 White Paper.

THE 1939 WHITE PAPER

Given the results of the 1937 Peel Commission, which found that it was the Arab leadership that had instigated the violence of the Arab Revolt (against Jewish immigration), the Jews in Palestine were absolutely dismayed when the British issued the 1939 White Paper.

The White Paper, in direct contradiction with the findings of the Peel Commission, called for the establishment of a singular Palestinian Arab state. The Jews felt that, in light of previous promises, hundreds of years of Arab subjugation of Jews, and Arab violence against the Jews in Palestine, a single, Arab-majority state would shatter any illusion of Jewish self-determination. 

Most damningly, the White Paper also almost entirely banned Jewish immigration, while Arab immigration continued to flow freely and without restriction into Palestine. The White Paper limited Jewish immigration to up to 75,000 people within a period of 5 years, and any further immigration would be subject to the approval of the Arabs. Keep in mind that this was on the brink of World War II, when millions of Jews were desperate to escape Europe.

Jews were also banned from purchasing any lands owned by Arabs, save for 5% of the Mandate territory. 

The Jewish Agency for Palestine issued a statement saying that the British were denying the Jews their rights in the “darkest hour of Jewish history.”

ALIYAH BET

Aliyah Bet is the code name for the wave of Jewish illegal immigration and illegal rescue missions to Mandatory Palestine between 1920-1948, and particularly after 1939, after the British passed the 1939 White Paper. Aliyah Bet happened in two phases: phase one (1934-1942/1944) and phase two (1945-1948).

The rescue missions were carried out by a network of Zionist organizations. Some 62 missions were carried out between 1937-1944, the majority of them unsuccessful and often ending with catastrophic results. 

Some 70,000 Jews, aboard 62 or 66 vessels (sources differ), attempted to reach Palestine via ship during World War II. Only ~15,000 made it safely, as most were unable to penetrate the British blockade. Five ships sunk, resulting in nearly 1,600 casualties.

After the war, the Haganah continued its illicit operations, now smuggling Holocaust survivors out of Europe. Overall, some 70,000 Jews arrived to Palestine in over 100 ships throughout the course of Aliyah Bet. This was a modest number considering the high number of Jews that attempted to travel to Palestine unsuccessfully. 

Aliyah Bet created a conundrum for the British. On the one hand, they were trying to appease the Arab Higher Committee, which decried Jewish immigration. On the other hand, the world saw the British as cruel, keeping Holocaust survivors trapped in detention camps and banning them from Palestine.

Had the British supported the Zionist movement, there would have been no need for Aliyah Bet, nor would 1600 Holocaust refugees have died at sea en route to Palestine.

DETENTION CAMPS IN CYPRUS

The 1939 British White Paper remained in effect until 1948, with the establishment of the State of Israel. After the end of the Holocaust, Aliyah Bet continued in full force. Most of the would-be immigrants -- Holocaust survivors -- were detained by the British and placed in prison and internment camps. The largest of the camps were located in Cyprus, which was a British colony at the time.

Between 1946 and 1949, some 53,510 Jews were held prisoner in these camps. The majority had arrived from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, though a small number of Moroccan Jews were imprisoned as well. 80% of the prisoners were between the ages of 13-35, and 6,000 of them were orphans. Some 2,000 Jewish children were born in the camps. After Israel’s independence, Israel evacuated the last 10,200 prisoners into Israel.

The conditions at the camps were atrocious and inhumane.Jews had to face obstacles such as poor sanitation, overcrowding, lack of privacy, and a shortage of drinkable water. The American Joint Distribution Committee, which provided medical aid, extra food rations, and more, stated that the British treated Jewish refugees in Cyprus worse than they treated Nazi prisoners of war in adjacent camps. 

Tents and barracks were overcrowded. There was a severe clothing and shoe shortage. The food was bad quality. Undoubtedly the biggest issue was lack of water, particularly during the summer, which resulted in poor sanitary conditions and the spread of disease. The British officers responsible for the refugees were unwilling and indifferent. The barbed wire and watchtowers reminded the Jewish refugees of their time in Nazi concentration camps, which was retraumatizing. Additionally, the camps had been built by Nazi POWs, which understandably upset the Jewish detainees.

Some 400 Jews died in the internment camps in Cyprus.

Jewish children in a British detainment camp in Cyprus after the Holocaust. Some 400 Jews died in these camps, due to lack of sanitation, malnutrition, subpar medical care, ill-treatment, and other poor conditions.

ATLIT

Atlit was a British concentration camp near Haifa used to hold Arabs and Jews under administrative detention (i.e. without a trial) during the period of the British Mandate. It was built in the 1930s and was primarily used to imprison Jewish refugees who arrived in Palestine. Some 10,000 Jewish refugees were held there. 

Men and women were separated upon arrival and sent to showers to be deloused with dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. Since many of the prisoners were Nazi concentration camp survivors, the showers were especially frightening and traumatic. Barbed wire formed a barrier between the men and women in the camp and the perimeter was surrounded by watchtowers eerily reminiscent of the Nazi camps. Children were separated from their parents. 

A nurse at Atlit described the conditions in 1947: “"...when the Jewish Agency asked me to come here, I felt maybe at last I could do something for the survivors. Then I saw the things that you're seeing now. The results of the Nazi dehumanization. People with no belief in the future, apathetic, quarrelsome, no morals...”

JEWISH INSURGENCY AGAINST THE BRITISH

Had the British been “on the side of the Zionists,” then there would have been no need for the Zionists to launch an insurgency against the British.

Zionist non-violent and violent (including terrorism) resistance to the British began after the 1939 White Paper. It was temporarily put on hold with the outbreak of the Holocaust, when the head of the Jewish Agency and future first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, announced, “We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.”

Towards the end of the Holocaust, however, the Irgun resumed its anti-British operations, when its leader and future prime minister Menachem Begin announced in February of 1944: “There can no longer be an armistice between the Jewish Nation and its youth and a British administration in the Land of Israel which has been delivering our brethren to Hitler…Our nation is at war with this regime and it is a fight to the finish.” 

The Haganah, which was under the jurisdiction of the officially recognized Jewish leadership in Palestine, remained mostly cooperative with the British, while putting pressure on them to open up Jewish refugee restrictions.

 Perhaps most infamous of all Irgun operations was the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946, where the British held administrative quarters. Begin had warned the British of the bombing in advance, giving them ample time to evacuate their staff and hotel guests, but they didn’t listen. In the end, 91 people were killed in the bombing.

Following the bombing, the Irgun and Lehi continued attacking British police and military targets. In retaliation, the British imposed a number of restrictions on the Jewish population of Palestine,such as martial law, military curfews, random searches, and mass arrests. Tensions grew between the Haganah — which condemned the bombings — and the Irgun and Lehi.

BRITISH ANTISEMITISM

The unrest in Palestine reignited widespread British antisemitic sentiment, both within the Mandate and in Great Britain. 

For example, after the Irgun kidnapped and hung two British sergeants, British soldiers went on a rampage in Tel Aviv, indiscriminately attacking the Jewish community and killing five Jews. In Great Britain, the outraged population rioted against the Jewish community, a riot which devolved into a pogrom, with many carrying signs with messages such as “Hitler was right.”

Jews were consistently put under curfews and subjected to ill-treatment.

Winston Churchill himself wrote that the British soldiers in Palestine were strongly pro-Arab. The Jewish Agency issued frequent complaints that the soldiers made antisemitic remarks, such as “bloody Jew,” “pigs,” or even vowing to finish the job that Hitler had started. 

It was the British officers in Palestine that first engaged in Holocaust inversion; that is, the depiction of Jews as Nazis. In March of 1945 — about two months before the Nazis even surrendered — the High Commissioner of Palestine, Lord Gort, told the Colonial Secretary in London that “the establishment of any Jewish State in Palestine…will almost inevitably mean the rebirth of National Socialism [i.e. Nazism] in some guise.”

Sir John Bagot Glubb, who later became the British Commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion during the 1948 war, called Jews “unlikeable, aggressive, stiff-necked, vengeful, and imbued with the idea of [being] a superior race.”

1948

The British abstained from voting in the 1948 United Nations Partition Vote. Some British officials, most notably British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, openly opposed any partition or establishment of a Jewish state.

The British fought in both official and unofficial capacities alongside the Arabs in the 1948 war. In other words, they fought against the establishment of a Jewish state and in favor of an Arab state. Most importantly, British officer John Bagot Glubb commanded the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948.

After the British withdrew from Mandatory Palestine on the eve of Israel’s independence, they handed their arms over to the Arabs, not the Jews. In fact, it was British intelligence that convinced the Arabs to invade in 1948.

At one point in 1949, the British even considered invading the State of Israel to protect their own interests in Egypt.

In conclusion:

Before the British even set foot in Palestine, they had made contradictory promises of sovereignty to Jews, Arabs, and other Middle Eastern minorities.

However, by the time that the British actually were in Palestine, they actively did everything they possibly could to appease the Arabs, thus working to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.

Had a Jewish state not become a reality in spite of the British, the Balfour Declaration would have long been forgotten, just like the unfulfilled promises the British made to the Assyrians and Kurds.

The fact of the matter is that virtually every border in the Middle East was carved up by the British and French, yet only the Jewish state is delegitimized on that basis. In fact, some countries were invented by the British entirely. For example, the British aided in the creation of Saudi Arabia by funding and supporting the Al Saud family, which, with their help, came to dominate a large chunk of the Arabian Peninsula. The British quite literally invented Iraq when they created the Mandate of Iraq in 1921 in part of what had long been known as other regions, including Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia. And, of course, the British created Jordan when they handed an enormous piece of the Mandate of Palestine over to the Hashemites in 1922. The Hashemites are from Arabia, not Transjordan.

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram

rootsmetals

EDIT - 1948 slide - partition vote was in 1947! Sorry typo 😅

the British put Jewish children (Holocaust survivors!!!!) in concentration camps to appease the Palestinian Arab leaders, but the BaLfOuR dEcLaRaTiOn, right? 🙄 Crazy how certain people think it’s totally fine to whitewash this horrid history when this whitewashing comes at the expense of Jews and Jewish trauma. Genuinely wondering if you’d treat another minority’s history like this.

[tinylilvalery]

Y'all really not getting that Ken moved to start cutting Sh/v out because she literally couldn't have an objective business discussion and instead just wanted to be shady and shit in every interaction (eg the plane where Ken and Rom where trying to prepare for Lukas,,, which she shoulda been preparing alongside them instead of sidelining herself after just being obstructive) because her ego was bruised that her Fairyland idea where her and her brothers are COO together isn't a reality due to the fact that 1. The board wouldn't have gone for it cos the idea of a 3 sibling COO is fr a fairytale. Ken and Rom where correct in saying this and they know the board more intimately then Sh/v. 2. She has no experience at Waystar unlike Ken and Rom who have been a part of the company for years, Ken WAY more intimately so.

Her ego is literally so fragile and bruised rn and has sm internalised misogyny that she fell for Lukas' "You're not like other girls, you're a cool girl 🙃 You're like your dad :)" and is now sided with him cos she CANNOT bear the fact that her dad named Ken as his Successor, not pinky, not daddy's princess.

Like,,, what are you not getting. You want her to have a win? It's not at Waystar that she'll have it. She was leagues ahead in season 1 of where she is now, since she'd actually worked for herself and built her own career instead of just acting entitled and like she should be handed Waystar on a silver platter despite having no experience. Rom and Ken have been a part of Waystar for YEARS. Ken was literally trained by his dad to take over. His initials are fuckn KLR for Killer. He is the eldest between Rom and Sh/v (I don't mention Con here cos he's never frothed for Waystar like the others have). His father wrote for him to take over Waystar and then underlined it.

If you want a win for Sh/v then root for her to achieve that outside of Waystar instead of acting like she deserves to be CEO at Waystar for whatever outlandish purely emotional based reason.

[philosophybits]

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks (1886-1887)

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

btw there never has been, nor will there ever be, a ship as sacred as wolfstar

[tj-crochets]

So my little brother and I are not allowed to be on the same team for family game night when we play games like Taboo, because most of the time we share a brain cell and the rest of the family has decided it's an unfair advantage. Today, I was trying to remember the word hummus but completely blanked, so what I said was: "Cabbage. No, hermitage" And my brother guessed "Brussels sprouts?" "No, it's a brown goo" I said, but my brother heard "it's a round goo" "Hummus!" he said "that explains the green from cabbage" "It was hummus, but hummus isn't green????" "Oh I was thinking of guacamole" So like. Even when he and I are thinking of totally different things we can still come up with the same word lol

[ectonurites]

i looooove getting yelled at for trying to explain the answer to a question i was literally asked.

[feroluce]

When Al Haitham dreams, it's in shades of sandy blonde and red, metallic gold and feather-blue. His nightmares are colored much the same.

Kaveh leisurely strolls ahead of him, shoes leaving deep treads in the soft desert sand. He keeps a careful distance, arms length, and in return Al Haitham keeps an eye on him, the other man's back dead center in his sights.

He curses the sand in his boots and the long line of footprints he steps into, already the exact shape of the soles of his shoes.

They aren't lost. Al Haitham knows where they are. They've been here before. They are still here.

Kaveh doesn't watch their feet. His head is constantly tipped back with his eyes on the stars and their constellations (of which Al Haitham only knows two, Vultur Volans and Paradisaea). He'll walk right into a cactus like that. Al Haitham yells ahead for him to watch where he's going.

Kaveh reaches up to touch the side of his head in a strange motion, but otherwise there's no acknowledgement. They press on into the dark of night.

Something squelches beneath Al Haitham's boot.

It stops him short, pulls his attention like a magnet and as much as he wants to, he can't ignore it. He doesn't want to lose any more ground. But something won't let him move on. Al Haitham watches as red seeps into the golden sand, spills beyond the border of his bootprint until he slides his foot aside.

It's an ear.

It's a human ear, and there's a heavy earring attached, metallic gold, gems red and green, a familiar shape, a familiar shade-

Al Haitham opens his mouth to yell. Chokes. Swallows the lump in his throat as he quickly restarts his pace. Tries again.

"Hey!"

Another squelch under a hurried footstep. He doesn't stop to look. Al Haitham is pretty sure he knows what it is.

"Kaveh, hey!"

The path becomes littered, little slices and small pieces, fingertips and knuckles, Kaveh's arms once held casually behind his back now strewn along the sands. Every time Al Haitham extends his hand to him, reality warps and bends like the twisted image in a broken mirror, lines mismatched and edges jagged. Kaveh flits just beyond his grasp, fleeting fae, no longer able to hear him or to reach out to him. Al Haitham can only grit his teeth and follow.

His right foot marches forward. His left follows. His right again. His left suddenly doesn't follow, and Al Haitham is thrown off balance and pitches forward, swinging his arms outward to land on his palms and keep his face off the ground, because he's been in the desert enough times to know what a foot suddenly being stuck can mean.

Quicksand.

Al Haitham curses and swears in just about every language he knows as he tries to spread his weight as evenly as possible, stay afloat at the top of it because if he sinks, he knows he'll be done for, and shit, Kaveh.

His neck cranes uncomfortably in his search, Kaveh had only been a few feet in front of him, he can't be sunk much further, and he's in the desert much more often than Al Haitham anyway, he'll be familiar with what to do-

Kaveh stands in front of him, empty sleeves fluttering loose. Still just out of his grasp, still watching the stars. The quicksand is already up to his calves.

"Say, Al Haitham..." It's the first he's spoken this whole time. His voice resonates somewhere deeply nostalgic in Al Haitham's chest, produces a ripple that momentarily stuns his heart.

Kaveh is sinking.

Al Haitham stretches out on his belly as far as he's able, it's quickly up to his knees, Kaveh isn't even trying to redistribute his weight or pull himself out, it's at his thighs, Al Haitham sucks in a breath and yells for him, his hips, yells louder, his waist, Al Haitham's trembling fingertips can almost reach, his chest, Kaveh drops level with him, quicksand about his neck like a noose.

Kaveh's head tips back, back, impossibly far back, until it hangs, angle awkward, and he's looking right past Al Haitham with his tired smile and gouged, blinded sockets full of starlight.

"Do you believe in karma?"

The quicksand swallows him entirely and Al Haitham dives, shoves his arms deep and pushes off with the one foot he'd had left on safe ground, because he can't, he can't, it's not the same without Kaveh, not anymore, he needs him, no one else keeps him sharp, no one else challenges him like Kaveh, if he can just grab him, if he can just pull him back up-

Al Haitham thrashes, against the sands, against gravity, against the hardwood of his bedroom floor. Clumsily scrubs the back of his hand across his face to rub the grit of quicksand and sleep out of his eyes.

Sometimes he thinks he preferred it when the Akasha was still harvesting his dreams.

He pops his head out from under his weighted blanket and lays where he'd fallen out of bed for a moment, blinking blearily against the lamplight shining from his desk in the corner. Deep breaths. His consciousness shifts along the blurred line of nightmare and reality, crosses over the slow transition into wakeful awareness.

He's home, Kaveh is home. It's dark out. The house is dead silent.

He's just going to go check, he tells himself as he peels himself out of his sweat-soaked shirt and roots around for a replacement. He's already losing memories of his nightmare, the details spilling away from him like wet ink, but he knows he needs to see Kaveh. It'll feel better to do something, anything, than try to go straight back to sleep.

He's quiet when he slips out of his bedroom door, because they both keep late hours but their bedrooms are right next to each other, and Al Haitham will never hear the end of it if he wakes his roommate up.

Lights off, door shut. Nothing conclusive. He moves out to the main room.

Kaveh sits on one of those ridiculous sofas he'd ordered three of for some reason, back to him as he tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. A mostly-empty wine bottle stands tall on the table, next to the cobbled-together remains of an architectural model that's been picked and fussed over for four days straight now.

"Kaveh? What are you doing?"

This earns him an exaggerated startle, but Kaveh doesn't turn to look at him, preoccupied with whatever new sketch or blueprint he probably has in his hands. "Ohhh, nothing," he slurs cheerfully. "Just working. Just thinking."

Kaveh has always been the world's chattiest drinker. Al Haitham waits for the rest of it.

"Say, I think...I think I asked you this years ago, back then, but you never answered me." Al Haitham feels all the blood drain from his face in ominous familiarity, drip cold down the length of his spine. Kaveh sinks into the couch until he can tip his head over the back of it, looking up at him with a tired smile and exhausted eyes.

"Do you believe in karma?"

[cologona]

No amount of Bruce torturing himself is ever going to be enough for Jason because Jason doesn’t want Bruce miserable! He doesn’t want Bruce to break for him! The conventional wisdom that says the dead would wish for their loved ones to find closure and live life holds true for him too!! No demonstration or example of Bruce’s pain is ever going to be enough for Jason, because that isn’t the crux of his issue!

Yes he wants to be loved, yes he wants to know he matters, but he did not come back just to collect a debt of pain.

And the difficult thing is that his problem lies at the intersection between Bruce’s role as his father, a heroic symbol, and Jason’s general. Only talking about it in terms of Bruce vs Batman is… it muddles the subject a bit.

[quibbs126]

While this is definitely subject to change since the game just came out, I don’t want to replace Alchemist on my TOA team, she’s too useful

She’s the ranged attacker on my team, her Special can hit multiple enemies, and her Ultimate has quite the range, poisons the enemies and usually does my job for me unless it’s a boss, and it stays up for a good while

Like I feel like the only way I’ll replace her is if they make a new character that’s literally her but superior in every way

[kenobihater]

you ever write up a combination of words you're really proud of at the time bc you think it's vivid but it's actually so atrocious that you remember it eight years later bc it's burned itself into your long-term memory? just me?

[queermania]

So many of your posts cross my dash and they're so good but then I go on your blog and unfortunately your a Dean Apologist so I can't follow you. Baffling that you can have so many good opinions while absolving Dean of any blame.

fellas is it terminal deangirlism to say that dean isn't to blame for choices other characters make?

[studebakerhearse]

Man I don’t know how conscious Nabokov was of this but the thing about Lolita that particularly strikes me is the way it showcases that parents treating their children like property i.e. keeping tight reins on them and refusing to give them autonomy makes them more susceptible to being abused by other people because they’re so desperate for experience and emotional fulfillment. Book that was written in 1955, the age of the nuclear family

[nerdyqueerr]

Every trans friend group has Certified Lawyer Satan, the worlds self proclaimed most pathetic woman in STEM, and Trickster Archetype

[philosophybits]

The overbearing matter-of-factness which sacrifices the subject to the ascertainment of the truth, rejects at once truth and objectivity.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 81

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

Y'know, whenever I hear someone say that CATS is "objectively" bad, I immediately wonder if said individual knows what the word objective actually means.