#trigger warning everything

[fullmetalfisting]

Do you ever see a news article that makes you want to become either an ascetic monk or a Luddite in an underground bunker with only gerbils for friends?

[gorgonstaringcontest]

This is a conversation I've had throughout my professional career quite often. I have to be cautious to avoid naming names, to keep my professional and online lives separate.

For context, the vast majority of my work involves talking about the worst aspects of the world at any given time. I speak at length and in great detail with people about the realities of anthropogenic climate change, petrochemical pollution, microplastics, ecological collapse, flora and fauna extinctions, the impact of geopolitical conflict on civilians, wealth disparity, and the failure of government and oversight bodies on these issues. The second aspect, I also am often exposed to discussions on many specific illnesses that do not have prevention, treatment, or cure - or do and are simply under-or-unsupported so their impact is not ameliorated - from various cancers, to genetic conditions, to neurodegenerative conditions, and more. The third aspect is sociological - human trafficking, homelessness, refugees, mental health and suicide, family and domestic violence, systemic issues affecting indigenous and first nations people, and education particularly supporting people who live with disability due to the failure of extant education systems.

That's not even all. And I've done this for thirteen years.

One of the subjects that comes up from time to time, often between people who have been around as long as me or longer, and those who are three or six months into their career is - how do we cope? How do we sleep at night? How do we reconcile our own lives with what we know, and how do we avoid falling into the stereotypes and logical fallacies that allow people to remain ignorant of these issues.

The truth is, it's different for everyone. We are all staring into the same sucking void of everything wrong in the world - with the knowledge that we're not even looking at 100% of it - but from slightly different perspectives.

Some of us will say that it's accepting that no solution is perfect, but any step in the right direction is worth taking. That if we care for what is within the sphere of our influence, and inspire others to do the same, then we are on balance making the world better.

Some of us will say we must reach as far from our own positions of privilege, whatever they may be, and amplify the voices of those who are the furthest from them. That the best course of action is to know our work is to directly counterbalance the disparity we know exists on whatever fulcrum we can see.

Some will say that we must hold truth to power. That because we are able to stand witness, it is our responsibility to do so. To tell the stories of the voiceless, and advocate for those who are not able to advocate for themselves. To make sure no voice speaks out alone.

Some say that they must strive to gain more power and influence to have the resources to make change possible. That the nature of finite resources means that to devote themselves to the acquisition and redistribution of that to those who have been deprived of the opportunity that provides is recompense for the injustice inherent to the world they've been brought into.

For me, it took a great deal of introspection. For those who have seen the nature of work without being involved in it, have asked me the same question in various ways - "how can you talk about all the ills of the world, and not give up? You spend hours talking about painful, tragic, preventable deaths. Exploitation by or failure of those who were meant to protect. The specifics of harm that happens to innocents. How can you feel normal after being mired in all of that? Why don't you just lose hope?"

And for me... After a lot of introspection, I realised - I can't give up. I take stock of what I have, and knowing what I do, I feel grateful. It throws simple experiences into harsh contrast because it's tempered by that broader understanding.

The other side is outrage. I am not angry, I am outraged - outraged, that a species of animal was killed to mine for gas or oil and is now extinct. Outraged that someone took their own life because they didn't get the help they needed. Outraged when someone dies of an illness that could have a cure by now, if only it was more profitable.

My outrage is not a flash in the pan. It does not spark and explode. It does not make me irrational, or lash out. My outrage is a fragment of uranium lodged in the center of my chest. Sometimes it feels like it existed before I was born, and will outlive me.

That outrage is the reliable core of my hope. It is not a delicate creature whose life is easily snuffed out. It's what drives me to do better and be better to bend those skills to changing the world for the better. It's not a last stand, it's a war of attrition. I've accepted that even if I live to be 100, the world won't be perfect when I die. But everything I've worked towards will have been to make the world the best, imperfect, version that it could be.

And I hope that those who came after feel the same way I do. That someone will wake up one day and find the fragment that called me home lodged in their chest, and continue to hope.

Daily reminder that we do not actually live in a dystopian movie put the apocalypse down and back away slowly. You know when your cleaning a room and you pull everything out of it's draws to sort through it and you're like "what the fuck have I done I'm never going to be able to tidy all of this" I think that's the stage we're at in the world. Thanks to social media we've pulled out all the messed up shit from the cupboards of the world, it was always there but now we can see it and we're going to have to sort it all out we made this mess and we can fix it. Falling to the floor sobbing will not clean a crusty room. A group of people working systematically (preferably with music in the background) will.

[zivazivc]

Happy Valentine's Day everyone

I drew this in April last year and if this isn't the perfect time to remove it from my drafts then I don't know when is kasvjhkxjcvpleasedon't shootme

[nipuni]

OUGUHH I'VE READ 'THE PILLOWMAN' 😭😭😭😭 It was absolutely brilliant and I'm already drawing about it lmao. Katurian K. Katurian I love you aaaaaaaa. It is horrifically tragic but also funny, thought provoking and Kafkaesque. It's also a very short and easy read. Here it is if you want to read it too!! The next time I'm in London I'm breaking into the National Theatre Archive to watch the original production with David as Katurian just look at him!!

[slaughtame]

No cuz imagine getting backshots from Doug and when you look over your shoulder, he looks at you like this: “(˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)” like how tf am I gonna take him serious plss

[nimbusclan]

Moon 9 Part 1

[Previous] [Start] [Next]

NimbusClan is back :)

--

“Fog?” Moonstar calls out from where she’s busy scratching shallow grooves into the earth under a large evergreen bush, the only plant in the area that has more than just a few stubborn leaves still clinging to its skeletal branches. There’s a haze of mist that hangs suspended in the clearing that hides her brother from view, but she knows he’s somewhere nearby, prodding around for moss that hasn’t been soaked through yet. 

In an effort to let Fogfreckle feel useful after his long few moons cooped up recovering from the eagle incident, she’d asked him to assign her a task, as deputy. It isn’t much – there’s not much for them to do that isn’t hunting and keeping an eye out for potential camp spots – but he’d beamed all importantly when he told Moonstar to find somewhere for them to sleep tonight while he gathered moss for their nests. 

A sense of pride had warmed Moonstar like a sunbeam. Eventually, when there’s an actual Clan for Fogfreckle to really boss around (and there will be, swear to StarClan), she knows he’s going to make a great deputy.

“Is that what this stuff is?” Fogfreckle calls back, his voice drifting from the fog somewhere to Moonstar’s left. With a snort, Moonstar backs out from under the bush and heads in his direction, peering through the thick haze until the shape of her brother is visible in the mist. He’s batting at the air like he’s trying to scoop the low-hanging clouds into his paws.

He looks almost like how Moonstar would imagine a StarClan cat outside of a dream to look. His pale pelt is ghostly with the heavy hang of clouds shrouding him, and his cobalt eyes glow with a dim blue halo.

She grins at his antics, suffused with an amusement that chases away the pervasive damp that’s trying to work its way into her fur. Flickering across her mind like a hummingbird’s wings, a sharp pang of nostalgia for their kithood washes through her, painful and heartfelt and gone in less than a heartbeat.

“Don’t be a smart-ears,” Moonstar chides her brother, flicking her tail against his flank. “I’m nearly finished with the dens; do you want me to help you gather moss?”

“That’d be great, actually,” Fogfreckle  mews. “I think I’ve found just about everything in this clearing that’s still dry. I got lucky with a hollowed out log, but we could use a bit more.”

Meowing an affirmative, Moonstar picks a direction at random and trots off into the cold, unfamiliar mist, mouth open to scent her way. The heady smells of damp earth and dripping branches fill up her senses. The blurry, unfocused leaves hanging still and silent in the trees press against her ears and muffle even her own pawsteps.

“I can hardly see past my own whiskers…” Moonstar muses quietly to herself. She squints into the fog. It’s thick like cobweb and sticks to her fur just the same.

Moonstar picks her way across the damp grass of the woods, heading for where the trees thin out on the cliffside. She’s hoping for a bit of wind that may whisk some of this fog away. It’ll be easier to find moss if she can actually see it. The ground starts to slope down towards the cliff, so Moonstar angles herself to slide carefully along the grass.

The silence is eerie. It makes Moonstar miss her Clan - the old NimbusClan - and the hustle and bustle of cats going about their daily schedules. She aches for the regular ho hum of days where she knew what happened next, where the hunting party would return with plump freshkill from the meadow and where she got to work on sparring with her brother and mentor in the shade of the mountain. The constant undercurrent of meows in the camp, days that were never spent in silence.

She puffs her fur against the chill and the memories.

Every day since she and Fogfreckle left the wreckage of the landside behind has been uncertain. Full cycles of the sun and moon filled with the unknown. StarClan decided that she deserved to be leader, but most days, Moonstar feels as incompetent as a bumbling kit. She could run a Clan that worked like a real Clan, she thinks. It would be easy, even, with a plan to follow.

Hissing, Moonstar remembers that she’s supposed to be hunting for moss. She doesn’t do well with this loneliness – she gets too lost in her thoughts. Some leader.

The ground slopes down sharper still, and she adjust the angle of her body and flicks her tail out behind her to adjust her balance. The wet grass beneath her paws isn’t much to hold onto.

A whisper reaches her ears then, a sigh of the wind, except none of the trees sway their leaves and the bushes don’t quiver. All is still when Moonstar jerks up her head, glancing around for the source of the noise.

“Hello?”

The murmur is there again, wet like water and blurry like fog, and Moonstar can feel the thick weight of eyes on her pelt, prickling there like ants. She whirls around, sure she’ll find somebody, some cat, maybe a predator, watching her through the fog, but the damp grass slips out from under her paws.

Flailing, Moonstar looks down in horror as the ground falls away underneath her, the mountain sloping steeply down at the edge of the treeline. Distracted, she hadn’t noticed how close she’d been to the edge.

She hits the scree slope hard, her teeth gnashing together and her paws skidding as she tries to find her footing. The mountain is steep and the gravel underpaw is loose and sprays out from under her as she tries to sink her claws into it.

Larger rocks dislodged from her descent tumble past her like clumsy kits, knocking into each other with bangs and cracks that quicken her pulse and claw at her lungs. The sound echoes across the slope, fenced in by the fog that surrounds her on all sides like a stranger’s breath too close to her face. Memories wreathed in scent and sound clamor for attention in her head, there and sudden and real and bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

She can smell it. The tang of blood, sharp, filling her nostrils, choking her with the thick scent of it. The wails of her Clanmates and the deafening, roaring crash of boulders falling into camp pound in her ears. Sharp stones dig into her paw pads as she races down the slope but she feels like she’s an entire mountain away, that night rushing back to her like she’s there all over again, living it for the second time.

“What’s happening?”

Moonstar lifts her head, blinking blearily as the earth under her rattles her awake.

“The ground is shaking!”

Her brother is pressed to her side, familiar and warm in the dark den.

“Rocks– it’s a landslide!”

Dark. It’s too dark.

“The apprentice den! It’s blocked!”

She can smell it, now. Blood. Her Clanmates are wailing in fear.

“Fogpaw!”

Moonstar leaps to her paws. The sound is so loud. She thinks her head is going to split open from the thunderous noise.

“Moonp-!” CRACK.

Moonstar’s heart races, thundering in her ribcage as loud as the rocks that tumble down alongside her. Desperately, Moonstar claws for purchase on the slope, but there’s nothing more she can do but open her mouth in a horrified wail as the cliff she’s sliding straight for rushes up to meet her.

She flies off the edge of the cliff, suspended in air for a long, horrible moment until her stomach reacts first, dropping before the rest of her body can follow. As she falls, she feels like she’s going to be sick. She flails her limbs for something, anything to grab onto as the edge of the cliff swallows up her vision.

[Previous] [Start] [Next]

[atomicpirateperson]

ppl who hate rob hate him because he done bad things like he isn't literally the VILLAIN of tawog and gumball definitely did WORSE

i was going to make a joke but these two images speak louder than words

[wormwoodandhoney]

some books read in 2025: the buffalo hunter hunter, stephen graham jones

this is my telling for today. the pipe is empty.

[rumlead]

what good is a mouth and ears if you only stare? // complicit witness // curly bro is the talk in the room with us?

had the idea for a piece that parallels pre- and post- crash Curly.. ideologically? Or at least to be representative of his body after the crash reflecting his prior actions. Curly pre-crash doesn’t truly listen to concerns about Jim or even have a proper conversation with him, but rather watches things happen (low interference, signing off on his psych-evaluation). Post-crash Curly can’t talk, assumedly has limited/no hearing (mfw ship blow up in my face), and no eyelids— call him the witness the way he be witnessing. He’s doing as much as he would prior to the crash, but now he doesn’t have a choice. There is definitely a more profound way to word it, but you get the point. Probably.

[rox-of-iu]

ive been afflicted with weird priest in brain disease

[shesnake]

people thirsting for Yao in Sinners should check out the 2022 film #LookAtMe where he plays twin characters one of whom is gay

[whataboutmysanity]

*downloads Date Everything demo*

*looks for Damien Haas*

*discovers Content Aware Mode*

I’m grateful for the feature I just didn’t know his character would have a warning

[slaughtame]

When Daemon is close: he’d glitch more consistently, appearance changing at a rapid pace, and his words incoherent due to the glitches.

[wildflowercryptid]

it's all fun and games until your goofy ass kinnie jokes actually start to bring some interesting similarities to light.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Sorry, but can I just stress something about Louis that drives me insane? 

In his route where you've saved him, he kills Dorian. Louis directly kills another person. He shot her with a crossbow through the mouth.

It’s unavoidable. 

Sure, it’s considered an accident, and even so, it was also self-defense—Dorian sure wasn’t there for a friendly chat, after all. 

But here's the thing... of the Ericson crew, we know that Clementine, AJ, and Marlon have killed someone. And Minerva if you want to count her, too, since she once was part of the group . But the others? Maybe they have killed before and we just don’t know about it, whether it be out of mercy or self-defense.

Violet in her route had the chance to kill Minerva, but understandably, she didn’t. She opted to shoot her in the shoulder instead… but we never see her kill anyone herself. 

Maybe you could count indirect kills because of the bag of bricks/log that kills Yonatan, and maybe you could consider Mitch’s death as indirectly Tenn’s fault… Speaking of Mitch, he tried to kill Lilly, but we all saw how that turned out, didn't we? 

…but Louis? He killed Dorian. That was his first kill. His first. 

And he feels awful about it! He apologizes to the body as it lays warm at his feet! He’s shaking and can barely speak!! It feels like bile! He doesn't even have time to process it because uh oh, the boat's going to explode!

But he’s also been so hardened over the season by everything that’s happened to him that he comes out of it glad that he has it in him to kill because if that’s what it takes to protect Clementine, AJ, and his family and home, then he’ll do it even if he doesn’t want to.

How does that not drive anyone else utterly mad?

Fandom considers him the funny guy! He's cute and silly! He makes Clementine laugh!

He's also done murder! He's taken a life! Just like Clementine and AJ have! Just like Marlon did!

And honestly, I think this also leads to him forgiving AJ for killing Tenn because at this point, he understands. He hates it, and he wishes it didn’t have to be this way, but he gets that AJ saw something that he didn’t. Louis knows that AJ’s hurting just as much as he is, he even says as much if Clementine says anything other than “AJ saved your life” on the bridge. 

He relived Marlon’s death when Tenn died, but it’s not like his hands are clean, either… and neither were Marlon’s. Clementine’s hands definitely aren’t clean. 

It drives me crazy that best friends Louis and Marlon have each killed someone in TFS but Marlon killed Brody in a moment of panic because he’s a coward who wanted hide what he did while Louis killed Dorian in a moment of panic because he was trying to save Clementine from Minerva and she came up behind him like… hhhhnnnnggggggggg, y’know?

Oh, and don't even get me started on the clouis aspect of this because I'll lose it. He talks to her about it because he knows she'll understand, just like how she's always understood him. How he goes out of his way to tell her that having a home means protecting it and he's going to protect it [that home being her, AJ, and Ericson] no matter what because he wants to build this new life with her aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I've lost it—

[chinzhilla-main]

𝔗𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔶-𝔒𝔫𝔢 𝔇𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔬𝔣 ℌ𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔬𝔯 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟹

He's just fishing. Not even he knows what he'll catch. He just threw out the bait, and your daughter took it.

The Wailing (2016) dir. Na Hong Jin