#you might not know this...

[rrcraft-and-lore]

Thing you might not have known, but yes, gladiators actually were made to promote/advertise objects in the arena when coming out. Seriously...they were celebrities in their era and product placement ads (live time) were a real fucking thing.

It's also why, contrary to the "popular take" of the thumbs down killing of gladiators, that was SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER and I Mean SUPER rare.

These were THE PEAK of entertainment back then. They were housed, fed, trained, paid sums, they were given whores, a lot of money went into them.

It'd be like taking your race track sponsored exoticar with legit major brand sponsors/deals and then going, DAMN, I LOST THAT RACE, FUCK IT, TOTAL MY CAR.

What?

Yeah, no. 9/10 gladiators survived their matches.

They also didn't fight all the time. We're taking 3-5 times a year. This overlaps a bit with pro boxer fights in a year 2-4.

This isn't even taking into account the myth of thumbs up/thumbs down. But...yeah.

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[infizero-draws]

drawing deltarune every day until chapter 3&4 drop ✨(day 101)

childhood sweethearts

[isuggestforcemasc]

I might know a thing or two about this feeling

[catsharky]

Happy early Valentines day, have something completely out of my wheelhouse! I wasn't joking in my previous comic, Stobotnik has me in a stranglehold (though as a heads up to anyone who doesn't follow me: I don't expect I'll be making more, I'm sorry 😔This is definitely a one-off)

Going through some old art of mine got me missing doing stylized, cartoony stuff so I thought this would be a good opportunity to push myself to bring some of that back into my life. Unfortunately the universe had it out for this thing and tried to stop me with pneumonia (it failed HAH) and every time I got closer to finishing it, I got struck with a new, more hellish stage of illness. I had 2 other panels I wanted to do for this and just had to tap out early😭

TFW your evil gay uncles think they can fakeout makeout you but one of them is 6 ft+ and wearing bright red.

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

hey since it's coming up again: no it's not a good thing that the government wants to ban tiktok. no you should not be glad that the government might ban tiktok. no you should not respond to this with "good riddance" or "hurry up I hate that app". I should not have to explain this to you but the government banning a social media app is still a bad thing even if you don't like the UI or booktok or having to say "unalive" or how you think it's killing the very notion of attention spans. It's still bad. It's bad.

[just-a-joey]

Silly post forsaken comic in celebration of almost finishing all my assignments/exams :)

[themetalhiro]

[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.

[hinamie]

mentor

[setaflow]

The dichotomy of Brennan helping with ability score rolls for newer players:

Titan Takedown: Preps high-level base stats for the cast, with everyone having a 20 in their two most relevant ability scores and no one really having a genuine dump stat (no one's character has below a 14/+2 modifier in any ability), which allows the players to play to their class strengths and not have to worry about fucking up as much in a shorter, tighter campaign.

Fantasy High: Ally Beardsley rolls a 4 for Kristen's Dex and has to live with with the consequences of that for 6+ years

[satoblue]

a/n : pregnancy, children mention, suggestive, could be seen as a little side headcanon to this talk post

everyone assumes clan head satoru (who never left his clan to be a student at jujutsu tech) leads a boring intimate life. he has always been reserved ever since he was a child — stoic, sharp, and straight forward. he is a man of little words, adding to the impression that he is emotionally and physically distant. possibly cold towards everyone — even you.

but then, people start to notice something strange which contradicts the idea altogether.

you, his wife, are always pregnant.

it is quite bizarre. satoru has never once shown an ounce of affection towards you in public. not a fleeting touch, not even a single glance that lasts too long. and yet, you’ve been married for less than five years, and somehow — you’ve already given him multiple children.

the notion is amusing to many, especially the servants. whispers begin to spread amongst them as it does; that behind closed doors, the composed clan head they all know must be anything but cold… given that he clearly can’t seem to keep his hands off of his wife.

[arimiadev]

oh shit rpg maker xp is completely free to own this week on steam??

[kiras-law]

light "if someone tries to read my diary i will set my drawer on fire" yagami

[lachonk]

Turns out you can edit the text on Pam's sign