#the kind that isn't awful

[refugeed-kim]

YES YES I NEED THIS SIGN IN EVERY SINGLE PARK PLEASE

This is my daily struggle, I had so many arguments with people with off-leash dogs (in a mandatory leash area!!!). Thanks to this behavior I'm struggling with Kim being anxious/aggressive with other females as she often gets involved in unpleased interactions with free females while on leash. And every single time that I ask for the dog to be at least recalled, I'm being called names and insulted of course.

Also 9 out of 10 their dog isn't really that friendly at all.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[clownowo]

a little bit obsessed with this guy

[foundfamilywhump]

see like the thing with 'carewhumpers' as a concept to me is it just like... i know this is prrrrobably not really how it's meant but something skeeves me out about the idea that kindness or caretaking mixed in with hurting someone can somehow meaningfully complicate or dilute the harm done to the point of making that character no longer a 'whumper' whereas someone doing the same 'bad' things but not ever being gentle or caring for them would just be a straight-out whumper. when like... that's how 90% of irl abuse dynamics work? so i just... don't really get the point, i guess. like to me it implies something about the 'care' provided somehow mitigating or combating the harm done that. i just do not personally appreciate or enjoy.

[ndostairlyrium]

Verses from Guido Cavalcanti's La forte e nova mia disaventura

[canisalbus]

Your art tastes like aged paper, sugar, and chocolate to me, with a hint of salt every so often

Machete looks like white chocolate, and Vasco's like buttery caramel

.

[vaguely-concerned]

just realized all over again that harding and rye never got to talk about varric. when he got out of fade jail she was gone. she's never coming back. they never got to talk about it. they will never get to talk about it. they spent all that time together, they became so close, and still they never got to meet in a world where they could both talk about it and now they never will because she's gone too. she'll never know he felt it just as deeply as she did, that she wasn't alone in it. millions dead thousands wounded in my heart and brain right now it's just a bloodbath in here

[medi-melancholy]

i love karna fate grand order so fucking much because in serious grail wars he’s an extremely fascinating, imposing, and badass character who just has this unique, grand air about him, he looks almost otherworldly and speaks with such purpose yet personality, and he has a huge amount of power, but he's dangerous because he does hold back until he either feels the need or is instructed to just explode everything

but nearly all the rest of the time he exists he is an autism creature in the shape of a gender man who just happens to have godly powers

he may look pretty and composed but do not be fooled. this is the glowy body horror god baby. he is a Huge Dork(tm). he never knows what to do with his face. when given the choice to wear whatever casual clothes he wants he dresses like an arts college student who just tossed on 2-3 layers of whatever was laying around on their dorm floor before heading to the nearest whole foods. his ass is the posterchild for flat fuck friday. he absorbed the meathead jock braincells from the guys he hung out with in life and during christmas he goes full unga bunga about it

in vibes alone karna is like a goofy baby albatross compared to his brother who may as well like the perfectly sleek and beautiful adult ones with the perfect eyeliner in comparison. which is ironic, because karna already has the natural makeup (also, once again, do not be fooled, arjuna is a screaming disaster on the inside, but that's a love post for another day)

i think one of my fav examples of the contrast between ~beautiful ikemen~ karna and absolutely clueless fucking loser karna is that bit in the 5th anni pv where there's that shot of him oh so cooly popping open a bottle of champagne, and he's got the bishie sparkle going on, and looks sooooooo pretty in his fancy clothes,

and then you realize

he just soaked arjuna with it, probably entirely obliviously

tl;dr karna good. yes he is cool. yes he is dorky and silly as all hell. duality of mankind

[volivolition]

wiggles my fingers at you ouuuu… you want to tell me about solace so bad…

HKJGG wiggles my fingers back lovingly!!! i really do, i fuckin LOVE solace :3 hey did you know i really like making fake skill descriptions?

SOLACE

Follow the north star. Find light in even the darkest places. Cool for: Optimists, Recovering lost souls, Sweet summer children

Solace is the skill you tucked away long ago, at the bottom of Pandora's box. The little one that tells you: despite it all, there is still hope. It needs a lot of nurturing -- and it's far from being the most helpful for police work -- but taking care of it is basically self-care. It enables you to find the glow in yourself that you often ascribe to gold lungs or brilliant halos in others. It encourages you to wake up and watch the sunrise, to play board games with someone you love, to forgive yourself and let yourself be a gentler kind of animal. Constantly looking forward to a brighter future, it also helps shield your morale from damage.

At high levels, Solace gives you a heightened sense of childlike optimism - which isn't always the sense to lead with in this precariously harsh world. Always looking for the bright side will blindside you with naivety. At low levels, however, you may just extinguish whatever keeps your soul alight. You've already lost her once. You may not survive the desolation if you let her disappear again.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ask and you shall receive (a sneak peak of what's to come)

[leverage-ot3]

not going to give the blog any attention or time of day but this is your reminder that the leverage crew would never be zionists or support israel whatsoever

I wasn't going to engage with it because I value my mental health but yeah. absolutely fucking NOT

y'all really think that this group of people that actively go out of their way to go against the rich and powerful, who make it their goal to help people that are oppressed, devalued by society and taken advantage by those more powerful would at all EVER align themselves with israel? bffrrn

I'm going to go off for a few paragraphs about why this is such a horrendously ridiculous and delusional idea, but I'm not going to clog up your dash so it's going under the cut. I want to respect people who already participate in activism and need fandom space for lighter things

tw for discussion of the atrocities and war crimes happening in palestine

over 25 THOUSAND innocent people have died as a result of israeli terror the last few months alone. over 10 thousand children. entire family lines have been erased from the world forever- grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren all martyred, often together as they are sheltering from bombs and bullets until they are murdered by soldiers that laugh as they shoot and detonate bombs.

you really think that eliot 'I adopt every child I see' spencer would support a regime that let a child stay trapped in a car where her family members were martyred, not let paramedics in for days and then when they finally let the paramedics approach they kill both her AND the EMS? you think he would stand with the government that arrests children as young as 6 years old for *checks hand* being terrorists (because what fucking 6 year old is a terrorist let alone any kind of national threat. they're fucking SIX). that snipes children for throwing rocks at tanks and their apartheid walls

he and all of them would weep at the picture released the other day of the little girl handing from rubble with her legs blown off.

all of them would be horrified of the bombardment that has murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians, women, children, men, elderly alike with no fucking care. that shoots people with their hands up waving white flags. that bulldozes graveyards and digs up bodies and probably steals organs from they dying and deceased. that bombs hospitals, governmental and archival buildings, mosques, churches, holy sites, schools and universities. whose soldiers have a trend where they go through women's underwear drawers and make lewd comments about their lingerie and how kinky they must be. who make tiktoks of them playing in decimated playgrounds and signing their children's names on bombs. who force parents to collect pieces of their children in plastic bags because they have been blown apart by relentless bombing. who shoot a grandmother holding a child's hand. who murdered a woman that dared say that she was older than the 'state' of israel.

the fact that you're posting this as israel relentlessly bombs rafa, the place they were told would be the only safe place to be, where 1.6 million people are living in tents living off animal feed because no sufficient humanitarian aid (if any) has been let through

these people that advocate for comeuppance and exposing wrongs would not support a regime that actively targets and murders journalists and their entire families.

you really think any of them would actively support a genocidal sociopathic government? fucking delusional

to a certain extent, I know that people want to keep fandom and advocacy spaces separate and I acknowledge and relate to that- when we are logged on every moment of the day we sometimes need to take breaks and engage with something else for our mental health. I need that too. and there is a very thin line when you try to apply fandom to current events because in all honesty, making headcanons about how your faves would react to X horrendous event can come off as extremely tone-deaf. I get you love your blorbos (I do too!), but actual people are suffering and it can come off as disingenuous to a lot of folks when you try to talk about your characters instead of the very real harm that is going on. HOWEVER, the other account posted in the leverage tag that the crew would be zionists and started that discourse and since it was already out there in our space I wanted to make sure that people know that this blog does not support that whatsoever.

and before this gets misconstrued: antizionism is not antisemitism. I have a lot of love for my jewish friends and followers, but saying that we can't be critical of war crimes and incessant aggression because it is a jewish state is fucking ridiculous. we should be able to hold any and all governments accountable when they do bad things (this absolutely also means I think we should hold the US accountable for enabling them and I live here. every country that is complicit needs to face consequences). saying that israel is exempt from criticism because jewish people deserve a right to a homeland isn't a great take. I completely understand fear of antisemitism and discrimination, but at some point we have to think critically and acknowledge that people are dying by the thousands and standing up for that and calling out atrocities takes precedence. jewish voices for peace has some really good content about this topic

anyways there's a random blog out there posting about how your faves are zionists splattering their rancid sponge and I want to make sure my stance on this subject is very clear: fuck israel, free palestine, and no one is free until everyone is free

[cookinguptales]

Do me a favor, okay? Next time you have a chance, close your eyes for a minute and take a deep breath and imagine someone loving you.

Imagine someone who gets excited just thinking about you. Imagine someone who loves the things you say and do and who genuinely enjoys spending time with you. Imagine someone who feels lucky every moment they get to be around you.

It can be a real person or someone you just made up. You can imagine them praising you or laughing with you or touching you or whatever love means to you. It can be romantic or otherwise. Take your pick.

And if you had a hard time doing it?

Do it again. And again. And again.

I read once that it’s important for us to visualize being loved. That your brain needs to be trained like a muscle, and like a muscle, it can become weak from disuse. Your brain can only do the things that you practice doing, and if you never, ever visualize someone loving you, it becomes difficult to even imagine someone loving you. You get stuck in a rut. And once it’s impossible to imagine someone loving you, it becomes impossible to believe you will ever be loved.

I think… sometimes it can become easy to stop believing that we’re worthy of love. And I think sometimes we have this fantasy of someone making us believe that we’re worthy of it again. Or that somehow we’ll just — earn it, one day. Being worthy of love and desire, respect and affection.

But I think the truth is that we can only start believing that we’re worthy of love if we’re capable of imagining it. And it becomes much, much easier to imagine it if you practice doing so.

It may feel awkward at first. Embarrassing. Silly. Maybe even painful. But think about it like this, maybe: your first day in a dance class, you’ll fall. You’ll look ridiculous. It’ll feel like your body will never be able to do this fluidly. But by the end of the class, you’ll be able to move in a whole new way. Maybe not perfectly, but… better, y’know?

Learn to waltz with your own mind, and try not to cringe too hard at your first awkward movements. Start small and work your way up if you have to. Someone liking you, then someone liking your conversations, then someone liking your presence, then someone purposefully seeking you out. Someone putting time aside for you. Someone thinking about you when you’re not there. Someone being with you because there’s nowhere they’d rather be.

It may feel self-indulgent, but… I mean, we all deserve to be indulged sometimes. And we all deserve to feel worthy of love.

So… indulge yourself. Take a moment and have a silly little fantasy. Get into the habit of imagining love, and imagining it for the you that exists right now, not the you that you wish you were.

Learn to speak the language of love as it applies to you, even if you think that it doesn’t, and one day you’ll realize how to use those syllables to say your own name.

It’ll come one day. In the meantime, let’s learn to dance together, okay?

[abyssalzones]

if you wannnnnttt you could tell us more about your ocs.. i know you've talked a lot about gills but i still feel like i barely know him. only if you want to though serious

HMM. I feel like I often give very barebones information about my ocs as I want the story in the comic to speak for itself, and I haven't gotten to the point yet where I'm ready to start advertising them more and making promotional art, etc. I want to make information sheets for the main members of the crew, more in-world illustrations, fun stuff for people to get into these characters more, but it's a little difficult when I'm focused on making the story itself. that and college.

gills in particular is difficult to talk about as so much of his arc depends on him being fairly mysterious and emotionally guarded... but I can give you the rest of the crew's pov on him from the point the story starts, which is that he's their mildly bitchy but mostly boring and reclusive weapons scientist who lives in the "lower" level/lab of the station. if he isn't in there, chances are he's locked himself in his quarters.

I would describe gills as being my most emotionally driven character in terms of how I approach writing him :] his arc is a labor of love regarding a number of things I have never personally been able to put into words.

and here's a sketch with him and domino that I never finished, something about domino messing with him by hanging out in his blind spot while he's working but I thought the pose was boring

[girlnextvore]

I love nothing more on this earth then a character trying to find comfort or betterment but is so deeply close to being a monster it comes across as inhuman and scary

its truly the most heart warming thing to me in the world

[rhineposting]

okay pause on phone people posting to do some Rhinedottir Posting ™

I think that while all of the Five Sinners are generally around the same level of unhingement and gray morality, Rhinedottir was just Like That even before taking a dunk in the Eldritch and Forbidden. I think it's kinda funny.

"That's Surtalogi, he basically invented lycanthropy and has a pet multidimensional narwhal that eats French people, that obelisk over there is Vedrfolnir, the single greatest visionary to kinda-live, capable of restoring sentience to the cursed, and the lady over there is Rhinedottir, a revolutionary alchemist and she, uh... Yeah these days she's mostly printing flying dismembered dogs. No idea why. She's not even taking care of them, or of any other thing she ever made for that matter. Yeah, she made a bunch of her clones and dumped most of them into a vat of acid. No idea why, something about them not being good enough. Oh yeah no, that was before our country was nuked. I don't know what's her deal and honestly at this point I'd keep it that way. Anyways, that guy over there is Rerir and he uhhhhhhh-"

[cravingpepsimax]

might end up in a not super great financial situation soon (not like i am already but it might get a LOT worse) and it's like. a part of me is like "ok people like cravingpepsimax do something with that" but like wtf do i do LOL i don't really make anything???

like i guess i could open commissions but pretty much all of my art on here is shitty doodles and shitty doodles are about the only thing i can trust myself to actually finish. how would i even price those. they'd have to be like. 3 cents each. which would be nothing LMAO

fucking. i can. make more fankids. and sell them as adopts. would anyone like that??? controversial ship fankid adopts (or design commissions, if you want me to come up with a design for you -- not gonna be a super detailed character sheet or anything tho lol)

(also, should go without saying, but any input/suggestions would be great. like if there's something y'all would pay for that i hadn't considered)