#and there are many of the same ^^'

[assaulted-loki]

I love how you draw DogDay. He's such a precious boy. I'd love to just place my hands on his cheeks and tell him how much of a good boy he is.

He loves it! be sure to remind him time to time

[an-na-ko]

Lyra, my beloved cat of 13 years, passed away this year on Father's Day. She's been by my side through very difficult times and was my little rock of steady and unrelenting love. I struggled a lot drawing this, and struggled a lot posting it, but I know I would've wanted to read a comic like this that validated my grief for her when I lost her.

Wherever you are, Lyra my little summer star, I love you always! Thank you for being the best thing in my life.

[acorviart]

not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails in a semi-professional (at the very least) format so you're not cold emailing a business/potential employer/any other stranger about formal matters in the exact same way you'd DM a close friend on instagram

the formality/language can loosen up in the email chain once you've established a rapport and you match the other person if they're being less formal, but please don't have the very first email you send a stranger be written in all lowercase ultra-casual sms slang with no greeting or signature and a billion emojis

[roseofithaca]

Odysseus crew: *watching him from the afterlife*

Elpenor: Look, he's hunting down the suitors! He's gonna kill them all!

Eurylochus: Maybe you were right, Polites. Violence has only lead to more violence. Perhaps the Captain would be better off showing mercy before he goes too far.

Polites: Are you fucking kidding me?! You heard what they were planning to do to Penelope and their son!! He should butcher every one of them!!!

[panakina]

I refuse to let DC reboot their way out of a warped timeline. No explaining it away, lean into it.

Tim drake is a 90s kid. He is seventeen, he grew up alongside computers and listens to terrible rock rap. Jason, one year older than him, is from the 80s and the height of the AIDs epidemic. Dick, maybe six years older than Jason, is from the 40s. Babs, five years older than dick, is from the 50s. The year is 2025. Bruce Wayne has just turned 40.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"you should wake up early to watch the sun rise!" is actually the dumbest possible way to guilt trip people into getting up early. hello, the sunset? exists too? every day even. and is equally gorgeous. and fits into many people's free time. you're awake, work's over and holyshit--THATSA SUNSET BABY!!!

[aerequets]

the mortifying ordeal of being known

--

I think with Yor being so perceptive, she picks up on little things often (like we saw in ch 103). i believe this would impact loid more so than the usual person, because he is a spy and fakes every part of himself, so to be seen is simultaneously desirable and horrifying. like, it makes him torn between wanting to accept and reciprocate the love, or distancing himself so that it doesn't happen again.

thats mostly what the last panel is about, that dichotomy between 'omg this person noticed this about me, is this love' and 'oh shit this person noticed this about me, is this Doom'

just some thoughts i had🤪

[inkskinned]

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

[trashy-greyjoy]

sometimes, it's not so much about the romance as it is about the devotion. the adoration.

[phantomrose96]

Actually I have a post I want to make about Property Value.

Which is a topic that comes up a lot in discussions of rich people hoarding wealth, in NIMBY panics, and in the ever-increasing prices of homes. But I don't think we talk much about how the perniciousness of property value goes deeper and basically holds middle class people who own a home hostage.

So to set some context here: in 2025 the median US home sold for $416,000. Say you have a working class family who can't meet median, but who scraped and saved and penny-pinched their way to a $300,000 home.

Typically, when buying a first home, you pay 20% down directly, and take 80% out as a mortgage from the bank. For this family, that means $60,000 of their liquid money (and let's say it took them 10-15 years to save that amount), and a $240,000 loan from the bank.

That's $240,000 in debt the family is. Which will be repaid over 30 years, with interest, at a rate that usually means for the lifetime of the loan, they end up paying back double the original loan.

However this massive $240,000 debt is generally considered "okay" debt to have, because it's backed by the house. If things go truly sour, the bank can take the house (and what's a little homelessness between friends).

That $60,000 the family put down is considered equity, and equity is money you "have", but isn't accessible.

Scenario: Now let's say something happens. Someone in the family loses their job, and the only job they can find requires moving. Or a family member across the country can't care for themselves anymore and so this family needs to move to be closer to them. The family gets divorced. Someone in the family is allergic to material in the home. Someone in the family is being stalked or abused and needs to leave the town. Anything at all, which would require selling the home and moving.

Case 1: The family is able to sell it for exactly what they paid (same property value, no increase or decrease). You would think the math is clean. They are paid $300,000 for the house. $240,000 repays the bank loan. The remaining $60,000 of equity goes right back to them. And they can use it (which took 10+ years to save up) to move across the country and buy a different $300,000 house.

Except no, it does not work like that.

The seller of a home is on the hook to pay commission to their realtor and the buyer's realtor. This is usually ~6% of the home value. They have to pay legal costs. There are taxes. There are miscellaneous costs. It can easily be 6-9% of the selling price of the house.

The bank NEEDS its $240,000 back. So those costs come from the equity. This family is not getting their $60,000 back. They're getting $30,000-$45,000, and now no longer enough money for a downpayment in their move. They're back to renting. Back to penny pinching. They can get by, but homeownership is now out of their grasp once more. Maybe in another 5 years, they'll have enough (unless home prices have increased too much by then) then they'll maybe never be homeowners again.

Case 2: The property value has DECREASED... Family is only getting offers in the $260,000 range.

If the family accepts a $260,000 sale, well $240,000 goes to the bank. This is genuinely non-negotiable. And that leaves.... maybe not enough money to even close on the house. Not enough to pay the realtors and the fees.

That $60,000 is wiped out, and the family is incapable of moving. Never mind losing 10+ years of savings--they're below $0. They don't have the money to close. It's financially impossible to sell. They are stuck with the mortgage. They are stuck with the house. (Maybe they'll rent it, if they can. And now they're landlords by circumstance, which is often NOT profitable when you're not a trust fund baby renting out a totally-paid-for no-mortgage home.) But whatever the case, they cannot sell it. And if the reason for selling was a job loss... well, they can be homeless soon. And if the property value dropped below $240,000, they can be homeless AND owe a bank debt. A $60,000 nest egg wiped completely out, with a bank debt owed on top of that.

So how do people avoid financial destitution when moving?

The most sensible answer is building up equity by paying down the loan--but it's important to know that mortgages are super interest heavy in the early life of the loan. With a 5% interest rate (BETTER, btw, than current rates) this family would be paying $15,460 the first year, and only $3,540.88 is actually chipping at that $240,000 principle. The other $11,919.59 was pure interest to the bank.

So after 1 year, the family went from having $60,000 equity in the house to $63,540.88 equity in the house. This buys a little extra wiggle room when juggling closing costs. But not very much. Even after 3 years, the family has just a little over $70,000 of equity, and just under $230,000 still left on the loan. So if the family has to move for any reason (sickness! death! job loss!) in those 3 years, it's probably financially devastating.

But there is a second answer to avoiding financial ruin: and that is Property Value going up.

Any amount of property value increase is PURE equity. The bank only cares about the amount of money it gave you. If after 3 years, that house is now worth (and can sell for) $315,000 (which is appreciation of only 1.6% a year. Most home appreciation is closer to 3%), that's more equity increase than they got from 36 diligent months of mortgage payment.

If they can sell for $315,000, pay $230,000 of that to the bank, that leaves $85,000. $25,000 goes to paying the realtors and the closing costs and.... the family is back to their $60,000 downpayment. Not trapped. Able to sell. Able to buy a new $300,000 home in the place they moved. Able to just maintain homeownership status.

But wait, if their home appreciated to $315,000, didn't all the other homes do the same, so now $60,000 isn't enough

Smart eye, lad! You've identified why this is a TERRIBLE rat race for the people scraping money together to live, and is ONLY a profitable leisure activity for rich people who sell homes like collectables.

Now because the increase is pure equity, a similar family with decent property value increase can funnel that extra equity into affording to meet the new higher down payment (remember the downpayment is only 20%, so even if the new place is similarly higher in property value, you only need to match that increase 20% for the downpayment). Which gets their foot in the door. But now their new mortgage is higher than the old one. More expensive. More interest.

But there is a losing scenario here--if home property values increased everywhere else, but not where you live. Then this family is back to surrendering homeownership. Because even if they can sell their place, they can't buy the next home.

It forces them to care about their own Property Value increase because, if it doesn't increase while everywhere else does, it traps them.

So what do I mean by all this

If the value of all homes dropped 50% overnight, I assume most people here would celebrate. Affordable homes! Rich people upset and crying! So much to love.

But in reality, that 50% drop would likely continue to mean no home for most of us, because the people who could sell you the homes would be financially incapable.

For the family above with the $240,000 mortgage, that mortgage does not reach halfway-paid-off until year 20 of the 30 year mortgage (remember the interest frontloading). If a family still owes $230,000 in bank loans on a place that can only sell for $150,000, they can't sell it to you. That house is the bank's collateral securing the loan. Their mortgage is underwater. They're trapped. They cannot sell it. You cannot have it.

Something similar happened in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, and the only people who got out okay were ones who could stay the course, keep making the mortgage payments, and wait it out long enough for property value to recover.

Those who couldn't got foreclosed on. Those who couldn't were left in financial devastation.

So in conclusion?

Banks profit off of mortgages. Rich people profit off of hoarding housing stock and selling it as the property value increases. Real estate companies profit off of home sales. And the regular people, who managed to achieve home ownership, are shackled to the price-go-up system to avoid financial ruin. They're forced to care about their property value because it is the singular determinant of whether they're trapped in place, whether they'll be okay if they lose their job, whether they could move due to an important life event.

It's a profit system for the rich where the cogs are middle class people who could achieve homeownership, running a machine where every single crank locks the poorer and younger generations out of home ownership forever.

[framblebee]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 1x1 In Throes of Increasing Wonder

—However misshapen they may be, your brother has no shame in sharing [his thoughts]. —You sayin' I got shame? —The lie you told about leaving the opera house early.

[effemira]

[mamawasatesttube]

BTW... PSA.... even if we arent mutuals if youre in my notes regularly theres a Very high chance i am still fond of you. yes im vaguing someones tags on the compliment the person u rbed this from post. but like. positive vaguing? THE POINT IS im weird abt following ppl but IM STILL SENDING U FOND VIBES...

[star-scroll]

Dannymay Day 6: Transformation

Background Reference: S1Ep18 Life Lessons, 11:07

[violent138]

League members discussing meeting Robin at work:

"Compared to Bats, Robin was a total sweetheart. Ball of sunshine."

"Man, must've been a good day then, the kid I met was a real anklebiter. He pulled out a sword and everything."

"Anklebiter is harsh, the sweet boy I met barely said a word, he just kept asking about Themyscira and the lasso."

"He? I met a blonde girl."

"No, no, black haired boy with blue eyes. We're talking about Robin."

"Yeah same here, blue eyed and tanned."

"Pretty sure he had green eyes. And talked fancy. And kind of scolded me for time travelling."

"The child I met was paler than the moon."

"I'm telling you I met a girl, and she was Robin."

"Well... either we're all wrong or we're all right."

So they arrive at the conclusion that Bats has a shape-shifter for a kid.

[vincentpriceofficial]

I think what i enjoyed most about Conclave was how obsessed with its own premise it was. Movie that keeps going “is it not fucking crazy that they just lock them all in the pear wriggler like this? Isn’t it wild that this is how new popes get chosen?” and i was like hell yeah it is brother. It’s crazy as fuck