#this is why he shouldn't have had a kid

[thoughtsandfiction]

As someone who has really let the tale seduce them this season, I have to say, watching it the Louis way is the best way to do it. Riding the rails of feeling is the best way to be. You get to be stupid and fickle and horny and willfully blind to your own weaknesses. We can analyse and overthink why he is the way he is, Lord knows I have, but the simple answer is that it's more fun. Being an unrelenting seeker of truth and meaning is exhausting (just look at Daniel) and leads to existential crises.

The Louis de Pointe Du Lac lifestyle is fun! When your lot in life is to be eternally caught up in the torrent of feelings, isn't it more enjoyable to just let them lead you wherever? If your curse is to be absurdly beautiful and always desired, cash in! There is a simple thrill to loving the beautiful demon man in front of you and letting him hold you and tell you lies.

Louis's problem is that he wants to buck against this. EMBRACE WHAT YOU ARE, LOUIS! A slave to his emotions! A tender-hearted bird! Coming easy to love, but withholding once in it! Erratic and winsome!

You're already doing the thing, babe! Just bask in the reality of it!

[msnihilist]

I still don't think Ben did anything wrong during "Duped." He deserves to do normal teenage boy stuff like see a movie on opening day, and he was trying to give himself that while also saving the world AND supporting his girlfriend's tennis match. He didn't spend enough time with his duplicates to realize that they had opposing personalities to their assignments — it's not like he sent his asshole-self to Julie's match on purpose.

[olasketches]

the hate yuta is getting right now really reminds me of this one csm post

link to the og post

[liquidstar]

Oh fuck tomorrow I'm going to be a little birthday boy I keep almost forgetting

[gh-0-stcup]

The Great Laws: Explained

Still seeing some confusion about the Paris coven and its laws, so I think an in depth explanation might be helpful to those unfamiliar with the books.

The Great Laws are an invention of the Children of Satan. The Children of Satan was a medieval cult of vampires. It was a way of reconciling their nature with their Christian faith. The philosophy is essentially this - God created all things and has power over all things so Satan is a part of God's order, vampires serve God through serving Satan.

The Children of Satan would renounce luxuries and comfort, avoid mingling with humans, and were not to look upon religious imagery because they were not worthy of doing so. They would also not kill humans who wore crosses because they were protected by God.

Members of the Children of Satan would kill (or attempt to kill) vampires who did not agree with their way of thinking. Or they'd just kidnap and torture vampires until they were agreed to join.

It was a religious extremist cult that terrorized vampires who were just out there trying to live their lives. They didn't represent the beliefs of most vampires nor are they meant to be a realistic example of "vampire society". They were unhinged religious weirdos who brainwashed a bunch of people.

And the past tense here is very important. The Children of Satan is a relic. As far as I can tell, by the time Lestat is turned the coven in Paris is the last one standing. And even that one is in decline. As theology and philosophy evolved over the centuries, their beliefs made less sense to even its own members.

Then Lestat comes along and provides the justification the cult needs to abandon its practices. He gives them a speech about how stupid they're all being and it works because they were thinking it anyway. He also provides them an alternative that allows them to keep a sense of community without the religious shit. Form a theatre company, make some money, meet some new people and have fun!

Unfortunately, Armand was one of those vamps who got kidnapped and brainwashed. He's spent the last several hundred years as the leader of a cult. He was never deprogrammed, he's never lived independently away from the cult, and he was never given much practical long term guidance. The only way he knows to keep control over a group of vampires is through the methods he used as a cult leader.

So the coven we see in the show is essentially just the Children of Satan without the asceticism and religious beliefs. Nobody else is doing this shit because the Children of Satan dissolved over 150 years before Louis and Claudia ever set foot in Europe.

Lestat didn't warn/educate Louis and Claudia about the Great Laws because they are rules of a cult Lestat was never a part of. A cult Lestat actively tried to put an end to. A cult that does not technically exist anymore, that Lestat might not even realize is still following this still.

Lestat did give them real, genuine, practical advice. Do not run off looking for other vampires. Though he says it in anger, his words are very true - other vampires present a serious danger to Louis and Claudia. Not because the trio broke some universal vampire code of conduct, but because vampires are vicious and often don't appreciate being disturbed by rando fledglings.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Cluemaster: Hey, bro, I know I never call...

Kiteman: You did drunk call me that one time.

Cluemaster: I already said I was sorry for spreading around that you were in love with your kite and calling you to brag about it. As you said I was hella drunk and angry your weird ass podcast somehow now has the same level of fans as my old gameshow. Who the fuck cares that much about kites? Or C list vilany?

Kiteman: Did you just call to remind me why I hate you?

Cluemaster: Of course not, Chucky boy, your my favorite lil bro.

Kiteman: Arthur... I'm your only brother.

Cluemaster: Yeah? You're still my favorite.

Kiteman: Okay. Fine. What do you want?

Cluemaster: You're good with kids right?

Kiteman: Oh do you want me to babysit little Steph? I haven't see her since she was a baby! That'll be soo much fun!

Cluemaster: Oh, no, no. She is too old for a babysitter. I kindda called 'cause I need your advice.

Kiteman: Sure. Go on.

Cluemaster: How would you stop a prank war between your teen daugther and your bussiness partner that happens to be living at your house?

Kiteman: Woah. Define prank war?

Cluemaster: Like they just being annoying with each other... like non-stop Shrek music and painting one of her walls green?

Kiteman: Are you working with a child, Artie?

Cluemaster: No. Childrem are not really good at puzzle robberies.

Kiteman: So who the hell is in a prank war with your fourteen year old daugther? Is it that Polka Dot weirdo?

Cluemaster: ... Riddler.

Kiteman: Be honest, Arthur.

Cluemaster: I am!

Kiteman: Why the fuck would he work with you? Didn't he like was brought on to one of your trials and tried to sue you for being a copycat?

Cluemaster: No idea. I don't really remember all my trials.

Kiteman: Fair. Still isn't he like an actual treat? Like Batman actually tries to be always involved in his crimes instead of just sending a Robin or a cop kindda treat? Or hangs out with Cooblepot and Harley Quinn and fucking Catwoman and even Scarecrow and Joker kindda treat?

Cluemaster: Yes, so what?

Kiteman: He is waaay above your league. How the fuck do you got him to work with you?

Cluemaster: He is working for me because he recognizes my genius.

Kiteman: *sarcasm* Yeah, sure. At least it explains why I've been hearing that your plans don't totally suck anymore.

Cluemaster: Will you help me or not?

Kiteman: Anything for little Steph. But seriusly bro, the guy is a mentally instable killer, he is real Arkham loonie, A-lister and all this shit are you sure is safe to have him living with you? Specially if he and Stephanie are fighting!? She is just a kid! What if this prank war thing escalates and next thing she is in saw type death trap or something?

Cluemaster: Well than help me not to! I can't just kick him out, do you know how much I've been proffiting later?

Kiteman: And also he is an instable killer that used to hate you and wouldn't react well to being kicked out?

Cluemaster: Yeah, this too. Look I think you're overestimating the guy. He is smart and all and he can take a punch but I could take him out real easy in a one on one. He screamed like a little girl when he found a roach in the kitchem. I think I'll be fine.

Kiteman: Sure, you do you.... Maybe.... you could just.... help them find something they have in common? A TV show they like or something. It used yo work with us. They will bond over the thing and forget they hate each other for a bit.

Cluemaster: See was it that hard to help me?

*Chuck hangs up*

[Three months later]

Cluemaster: Chuck! I need help!

Kiteman: Can you call in another time? I'm bowlling with the guys, Calendar Man and Condiment King cannot win a second time, one weird rap about their love conquering all was ENOUGHT.

Cluemaster: Is about the whole prank war between Nygma and Stephanie thing.

Kiteman: Oh. So I guess my advice didn't work.

Cluemaster: No, no, it did. It worked way to well actually.

Kiteman: *worried* That sounds bad.

Cluemaster: Yeah... it happened that the thing they had in common was that they really hate me.

[sskk-manifesto]

\\

[awheckery]

DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

~

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

[dracolizardlars]

I wake up, I see that my beloved musician Kavus Torabi's new album has released, I think "oh neat!", I end up reading the whole very in depth "biography" that comes with the album on Bandcamp and find out he's been through some serious shit regarding his mental health and familial relationships, I take immense psychic damage

[legendary-assassin-stance]

oh i'm sorry, i didn't realize we were taking moral standing points from the asura now. y'know. the race that full-hog experimented and ripped apart sylvari even after knowing they were wholly sapient beings (and it wasn't even inquest! it was regular fucking asura! the arcane council most definitely okayed those experiments! never mind the fact that the council TO THIS DAY fucking openly allows inquest to do as they please so long as they don't cause trouble in rata sum) and have done little to nothing to apologize for that fact to their sylvari allies.

but no, you're right, the humans are the worst race in tyria just by way of existing and trying to find a place for themselves. how could i have ever thought different?

[spyroforlife]

wow Dream Minecraft actually did the thing

and he has exactly the kind of generic white guy with brown hair face I was expecting

I would walk by him in the Bushnell, Florida Walmart and not even look twice

good for him good for him

[boomingsmile]

who gave sharp the audacity to be so kind, loving, sweetest person. D:< no amount of words i can put up will ever be able to contain the vibe he has; i desperately need a drink with him and i dont even drink and he doesn't even exist!

[unhonestlymirror]

From the outside it may seem that I am an ungrateful crazy daughter, who bursts into tears and closes herself every time my mom "does a step" towards me. I just... spent so many power and time to get such result that now I don't have any to make even one more tiniest step towards.

[ssaalexblake]

what didn’t appear in that post was the line ‘even peppa pig is a little bitch a lot of the time’ bc i was trying to actually be serious, but i wanted to mention it bc it’s funny and also true. 

[sir-snow]

I don't believe in therapy.

Let's just read Neitzsche and do kinky stuff together.

That'll be healthy, right?

[bohemiandeer]

You know what hits me hard? When 5 to 6 year old children, all the way in Southeast Asia, knows about what's happening in Palestine right now. That children their age is getting bombed, that they're starving to death, that they're getting shot at, and sniped in the head. Because, just this past 2 or so months, I heard some of the little ones in the Kindergarten classes I'm TAing in as an Intern talk about it. Hell, one of the little boys downright said he didn't like Israel, because Israel is bad, because they do scary things. Another was questioning whether Palestine was bad too, because, "why else would they shooting at them?". A little girl in one of my classes doesn't want to finish her food at all, because she wants to save at least half her meat and rice for kids in Palestine, because she heard that, they don't have food. And that's just the ones I remember. Namely the inciting cases before their classmates slowly follow suit. The littles are fricking SCARED. We had to sit these kids down, and tell them that the topic is too mature for them at the moment, that they shouldn't even be concerned because they're KINDERGARTNERS, they're not even old enough to properly understand. The one teacher I was TAing for had to make a class announcement saying that. What gets me is, these are 5 to 6 year olds, the youngest I've worked with in this specific age group is 4. 5 years old on average, and they've already been exposed to the worst horrors genocide has to offer through the news and snippets of conversation among adults and hell, considering how many of them say they like to play games on Mama's phone, or their IPad, even from fricking social media. And the fact that, these literal babies, from all the way in Cambodia, has more empathy in their entire body and soul, than full grown fricking adults have in the nail of their pinky finger, gets me. FFS we as adults could LEARN from them I feel sometimes. I honestly don't know what to feel about it anymore. On the one hand, this is the next generation I'm working with. And if the next generation's default response to a tragedy such as Palestine, is what I've seen come up on occasion so far? Perhaps there's some bloody hope for this world after all. At least in this country. Especially since a majority of them already come from families who survived a genocide. These are the 3rd - 4th generation descendants of those who survived the Khmer Rouge. They've got grandparents at home, who no doubt are more than intimately familiar with what Palestine is going through right now. And it shows.

But on the other, it makes my heart sink because these are CHILDREN, these are LITTLE KIDS, they should be playing with their toys and watching cartoons and talking to their friends about everything from Spiderman to Speakerman to Kuromi and her friends, and be worried about whether or not they can go to playground that day, guranteed they're well behaved, or if Mama remembered to pack in their costume for swimming lessons that week. NOT JUST MY KIDS. But the little ones in Palestine too. They deserve better. They all deserve, so much better. Hell, it's come to the point that whenever I look at my kiddos right now, whether they'd be working in class, playing, doing something as mundane as eating lunch or getting ready for their nap. I think of the children their age in Palestine that didn't even get the chance to survive. I think of the ones whose memories from this age, is nothing but absolute horror and pain, rather than what has slowly become my normal, who never got to experience what my littles do on a daily basis right now.

Children shouldn't even be concerned about "War", about a Genocide. The last thing that should be on a 5 year old's mind, is pain, and suffering, and the worst horrors imaginable ever to be inflicted on a human being. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S INFLICTED, ON OTHER CHILDREN THEIR AGE. And for that alone, the world has failed them. Especially the kids in Palestine who didn't ask for any of this. They just wanted to carry on with life as kids do, the same way as my littles do on a daily basis no doubt, learning, playing, chatting with friends over their favourite cartoons and characters, worrying about whether they'd get to go to the playground or not that day.

I apologize for talking about this on this blog. I know my blog tends to be lighter in feel, a lot more unhinged and light hearted typically. I mean, I'm just a fricking nerd who likes to draw and write, and lurk about her favourite fandoms to consume and support what is shared among other nerds who also like to draw and write. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. About contemplating it, especially since I'll be back on a roll tomorrow, working with my kiddos again after not seeing them for 5 days straight because of Holidays. And, I just had to talk about it. This is something I felt I couldn't keep to myself this time, I don't think my soul'd be able to carry it. I had to talk about it.

FREE PALESTINE. Our children deserve better.