#which... feels backwards

[thatlesbiancrow]

i used to avoid drawing my cats because i really struggle with likeness and would get upset that my drawings don't LOOK like them.

but the only way to get better at the thing is to do the thing.

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[veryintricaterituals]

When I was in school I went to a friend's house to work on a project on a Friday afternoon. At about 6 or 6:30 when the sun was about to set her mom called us over to the livingroom. She lit two candles with my friend and then they proceeded to put the lit candles inside of a little cupboard so no one could see them. Me, a young jewish teenager asked her, my catholic friend, why they did that and she shrugged, said it was a family tradition to bring peace and prosperity, that the women of the family did it every friday evening and then hid the candles. They were very catholic, so I bit my tongue and we went back to her room to study.

This is just one of many, many, crypto jewish traditions that still exist in my hometown of Medellín, Colombia and I want to share a little bit about them with you.

Medellín is the capital city of a region called Antioquia and it is currently the second biggest city in my country. Now the weird thing about my region and my city more specifically is that it is in the middle of fucking nowhere, like we are in a valley in the middle of the andean mountains and it would take over two weeks by river, horse and river, and dunkey and mule to even get here before the invention of cars or trains.

Now Medellín was founded over 400 years ago, and families had been coming to the region for way before then, so that means that for centuries getting to my city from the sea or from the other big cities in the country was incredibly hard. This was by design, because Medellín itself was founded by about 28 families and we know for a fact that alteast half of them were crypto jews hidding from the Spanish Inquisition, and both before and the foundation more and more jewish families arrived to the region.

This is a known fact, the DNA of the people from the region has a lot of sepharadic jewish mixed in there. Early Colombian literature dating up to the 1845 would call the people of my region the Neogranadine Jews or the Colombian Jews. But because they were crypto jews the religion and most of the traditions were lost during the 400 years that have passed, now over 90% of the population is catholic and don't really know about their origins.

But some things stuck. And I want to tell you about them.

On the 7th night of December there is this pre-christmas festival called "El día de las velitas" or the little candle night that started and was unique to Antioquia. It's supposed to commemorate the candles that people had in the streets and the windows on the night Jesus was born and that helped Mary and Joseph to find their way. Do you know how this unique festival is celebrated in my city? People take to the streets to light candles, small colorful candles that they put in wooden planks or directly on the streets, it's the night that people decorate and turn on the christmas lights and it is so important and popular that we have an actual day off on the 8th of december.

Let me show you a few pictures

I don't think I need to explain this one. Even most goyim will know about Hannukah. But it is the weirdest thing when the dates coincide and we are all lighting candles together.

My dad was in the Jewish community board and we needed to rent a place to put our jewish daycare. They found this beautiful old house that had belonged to a family in colonial times but needed a little TLC. We had them remove some wooden floors because they were too old and rotting and found a huge Magen David made out stones in the center of the floor. The house also happened to have two separate kitchens and a mikveh or immersion bath in one of the rooms. These a very traditional things that colonial houses have in my region.

My grandmother converted to Judaism so I have a side from my family that is 100% from here and didn't arrive during the 20th century. I had the pleasure to meet both of my great grandparents from that side though they died when I was young. My grandma tells me that my greatgrandmother used to have one of these immersion baths in her house when she was growing up. Women were supposed to bathe in them after their periods had ended, my catholic great grandmother respected the mikveh traddition more than I ever have.

(I wish I had photos from that specific house but this happened over ten years ago, I'll show you some immersion baths from a different colonial houses that are also in my city)

Now how about we talk about traditional clothes. I'm sure most of you have heard of Ponchos, which are traditional in the Andean region, well the one from Antioquia is a little different and it's always supposed to be worn with a hat. Let's see if you can spot what I mean.

A few years ago Spain decided to grant citizenship to the descendants of the Jewish people that they had exiled in 1492. To get it you had to prove through family trees that your family had been Jewish. My city got the most ammount of passports out of everyone in the world, more than Israel. I could have applied from both my family that came from Egypt in the 20th century (we still have the keys to our house in Spain) or through my catholic side, as both of my grandmother's last names applied. I didn't but I could have.

I don't really know why I decided to finally write this post. I have so many more stories. I just think it's both incredibly sad that so much Jewish culture and people were lost but also it's a little heartwarming to see what survived even centuries down the line.

[calista-222]

WHY DO THE CONTROLLERS ATTACH LIKE THAT?? That looks like the most breakable thing I've ever seen oh my god

[esmes]

2023 revival todd/lovett + touch

[crystallizsch]

[rosecandyart]

NEW DAISY OUTFIT SPOTTED (credit to the person at the top of the screenshot)

[spookythesillyfella]

told you guys ive been plagued by the analogue horror fixation again

[arrimorr]

Helllloo!!

First of all, I want to say that I love your Gravity Falls content, it's so beautiful and deeply emotional.

I also wanted to ask if you have any headcanons about the characters, like Ford or Bill.

Hiiii! Thank you so much!!!!

Uhhh, im not really a "small headcanons" type of fan, BUT I have two character study fics about Bill and Ford, so, if you want to read my takes about these characters you can read them! Behaviorism is Bill centric, and, in my opinion is a bit better written, A step Backwards is Ford centric

[trappedinafantasy37]

"Weeeh! I wanna recruit Minthara on a good playthrough! Weeeh! I don't like the ultimatum and want to keep both Minthara and Halsin! Weeeh! I wanna make Minthara good! Weeeh! I don't want Minthara to break up with me!" Minthara deserves more content but none of these things are at all what she needs or deserves. No, these are all things that you want for yourself, but do absolutely nothing for her. This is one of the biggest L's in the game and it will forever enrage me because I just know it will never happen.

Minthara deserves to confront Orin like all the other companions do with their abusers. She deserves to scream and yell at Orin. She deserves to cut at her the same way Orin did, make her bleed and scream in pain. Minthara deserves to torture Orin, just as she did her in the mind flayer colony. Minthara deserves the right to roll up to the Temple of Bhaal and beat the shit out of Orin with her bare hands. Leave Orin begging for mercy in which Minthara will not even give her a drop. To slam Orin down on that altar and slice her throat, offer her up as a sacrifice to the father she is so blindly devoted to.

And yes, Minthara would be afraid. She would be TERRIFIED. Despite how strong and powerful Minthara is, she is also the only one afraid of Orin. Unlike Ketheric, or Gortash, or Sarevok, she is the only one who fully acknowledges just how dangerous Orin actually is and does not underestimate her. She will walk down into that temple, intending to duel Orin with a massive disadvantage because she is terrified.

Minthara choked when seeing Orin again in the mind flayer colony. She choked when seeing Orin as an imposter, throwing her deep into the ocean of paranoia and fear. And she is so entrenched in paranoia that it actually becomes palpable to everyone around her, even you. She describes herself as paranoid, but this is the first that you actually see how paranoid she is. And she choked again when Orin kidnapped someone in camp, making her feel inadequate, making a mockery of her for being unable to protect one of her own. And every day that passes, the more and more likely that the victim is going to die and she has doubts on their survival.

At every possible avenue in which Minthara could have done something or said something about Orin, she froze in place with fear. But she's had enough. She cannot be afraid of Orin forever and she doesn't want to be. One way or another, Orin has to die and she wants to get over that fear. She needs to know that Orin is dead, for herself.

This would also make the alurlssrin confession all the more impactful. She wants to tell you that she loves you in the best way that she can because of the very high likelihood that she will never have another chance to do so. She would beg you to come with her as you give her the courage. She has the courage to face her fears and confront her tormentor, because she knows she has you in her corner. If you have the courage to stand up to the very gods themselves, then she can stand up to Orin. Romanced or not, your presence alone is enough to give her the strength to do something she would otherwise be too terrified to do.

Minthara deserves the honor to solo duel Orin in a fight to the death. Minthara deserves the right to achieve vengeance for herself. No, I do not care that this confrontation would conflict with a Durge playthrough. In fact, it would provide a phenomenal source of some interesting, and toxic, drama between Durge and Minthara. Especially if they're in a relationship. This also does not mean that Minthara killing Orin instead of Durge would not have its consequences (because it most certainly will). Even if Minthara does not fight Orin, it would be so much better if Minthara was just given the fucking chance to yell at Orin like all the other companions in their personal quests.

[fictionadventurer]

I love Chesterton best when I dive into a piece of his writing and the words just dance. He's playing with sounds and words and sentences, so it's poetry and music and also just a guy saying whatever pops into his head, and it doesn't even matter if it makes sense because it's so much fun to read. There's pure joy in words and ideas and arguments that underlies everything, such an overflowing sense of humor, so you feel that it doesn't matter if you disagree because what he loves is the conversation. Pure delight. There's just nothing else like it in literature.

[thevaudevillescene]

looked in the mirror this afternoon while getting ready for work and went, “haha, okay dyke.” Then i looked again and was like “wait. sushi, get the camera, i’m giving hot lesbian vampire.”

[moe-broey]

Imagine if the new Tomodachi Life skirts the gay marriage issue (a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't at this point) by abolishing marriage as a construct. Deserting the war on gay rights on the side of DIVORCE EVERYONE. NOW‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[dafpork]

do you have any porky and daffy handwriting headcanons?

I THOUGHT I DID and then trying it out for this ask is making me overthink OH NO

i'm at least confident on Daffy's in that it's big and bold and maybe a bit messy. and i know that Porky's is small and neat by comparison and always in cursive.

but looking at these i'm like, this is just two parts of my own handwriting separated and given steroids. so i quickly scribbled this down to reorient and prove my hypothesis. and then i ended up liking my own cursive more than what i did for Porky's. but i also don't. I FEEL LIKE ABOVE IS JUST MY HANDWRITING. so maybe i need to think on it more. Porky is more patient with his handwriting than i am (which is why i write in all caps beyond liking the way it looks, it forces me to slow down, because my standard print ends up turning into this weird fake cursive thing because i start to get too impatient and write fast). but there's an organic cleanliness to my own script here not present in his, that i wish to be present in his.

this is way overcomplicated actually. all you need to know is that they have very different types of handwriting

[itzphynix]

To this day I cannot understand how fully grown adults manage to look at the Children's Show about forgiving people & making amends & making friends & get angry that the big bads didn't get, like, shot to death on-screen. In this children's show.

Ya know, the idea that you can't fight out all your problems or just kill people you don't like does make sense as a moral for children, but a lot of adults got weirdly angry about that.

[zombie-dogg]

I stg I wanna grab my gf sometimes and shake her til she understands she's loved and not a burden on anyone