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My name is Abed.

I’m a survivor from Gaza, holding on to hope in a world that has fallen apart around me. 💔

The life I once knew — my home, my family, my sense of safety — has been shattered by war. Today, I live among the ruins, trying to find a path forward through the rubble and heartbreak. 🏚

Every moment is a battle against fear and uncertainty. What was once ordinary — a safe place to sleep, a future to dream of — now feels like a distant memory. 🕊️

I share my story not to seek pity, but to keep hope alive — to believe that even in the darkest places, kindness can still find a way. 🤍

If my story touches your heart, please consider sharing it or offering support. Every voice, every act of care, brings me one step closer to safety. ✨

Thank you for taking the time to listen. 🙏

Post Link

Donation link is here.

7,640/90,000$ goal.

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Anyways. Stares out the window for a very long time

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It's been rotating in my brain for a while, so I decided to compile my thoughts about the parallels between anaxa and sunday in terms of the way their writing, personality and themes align with one another. At this point, I don't believe this is coincidental.

Anaxa sees reason and emotion as coexisting concepts instead of opposing ends. he rejects himself but he doesn't reject his humanity. he rejects his life but doesn't reject his personhood. he debatably has more faith in his students than he does in himself, because he puts so much trust in them to continue his work. to question everything. to forsake everything. to prove everything he can because he has nothing to lose. he guards his theories with his life because its literally all he has left. and i just like how antideterministic it is. they're doomed but he proves its not humanity being doomed by the gods, its humanity's ability to both doom and save itself.

the parallels between sunday and anaxa are best summed up by these two quotes from their respective trailers:

sunday: knowing there were no gods who could save people unconditionally. to change anything, you can only rely on yourself.

anaxa: gods, decry it as blasphemy - if that is all you can do [...] we alone are the true gods of this world.

How can they believe there's such a thing as a god after all they've lost? A line that particularly stuck out to me in anaxa's stories was cerces's goading of anaxa, asking him if he prayed to the titans upon seeing his hometown ruined and his sister dead. It disclosed a deeper, more personal sentiment anaxa has towards the titans than a mere desire to erase their existence. For anaxa, forsaking the gods means to wrestle control back to humanity's hands, to his hands, in the face of an uncontrollably tragic fate.

In this sense, both anaxa and sunday must deal with a desire for control, doing so by getting their respective gods out of the equation. I think Sunday's words at the grand theatre are incredibly important to this point, and indicate just how similar (if, of course, different circumstantially) their characters and arcs are:

Sunday: My desire is not to resurrect a fallen Aeon, or become one myself... my sole objective is to create a paradise free from Aeons, where the Order ensures the dignity and happiness of all humanity. A paradise exclusive to us human beings".

Sunday, for all his religious theming and imagery, wishes to forsake the gods in favour of an order of safety, to be the sole person remaining awake to guard the dreaming. I think it's very interesting that thematically, anaxa is framed as chaotic, wishing to disrupt the status quo, a perceived opposite to sunday, who in fact shares many more similarities with his mindset than you'd imagine. They both want to liberate mankind from the gods, so their fates won't be inextricably tied to the gods' whims, having grown disillusioned with them. Here however, the stark difference in their methods comes into play: while sunday's desire for humanity's happiness is regrettably robbing it of agency, anaxa's desire for humanity to gain its agency back is knowingly robbing them of their faiths.

Sunday doesn't have faith in humanity's ability to overcome hardships, and in order to be their protector, he decided to usurp the role of a god - he saw horrors so severe, that he felt he had to shoulder their protection for himself. Sunday operates by his sense of anxiety which inadvertently disclosed his lack of faith, taking things into his own hands to ensure they will go as well as possible - he can ensure the success and happiness of humanity only if he takes the burden upon himself and sees it through with his own hands. He feels only he can, or really must, be the responsible person who can shoulder the burden of protecting humanity, which inadvertently strips them of agency. Meanwhile, anaxa's entire thesis is based on his own disillusionment with the gods and faith in humanity, that his plan and eventual usurping of the titan position was in service of proving humanity's agency over the titans by their being identical beings. Anaxa has so much faith in humanity, to the point of disregarding his life and physical existence and completely trusting his students to continue what he can't finish. The blasphemer is driven by faith in humanity, while the believer is driven by distrusting the gods.

To their respective ends, they both decide to pose themselves as antagonists in the eyes of the public in order to ascend to a higher position at the expense of their own lives and well being. They're both themed and viewed as performers of sorts (depicted in stage settings, the performer and the conductor), which on the surface level, epitomise sunday as an organizer, a puppeteering figure, a follower of Order, and anaxa as the wild stage performer, a soliloquy giver, disrupting the audience's understandings of the world into chaos. I contend, however, that the complete opposite is true, making these parallels all the more compelling. Sunday's performance is entirely puppeteered and driven by his sense of anxiety, desperation, and an urge to escape reality, not being able to withstand its horrors - the order hides personal chaos. On the other side of the coin, anaxa's performance is the epitome of calculated, an argument and theory decades in the making, meant to be his final proof so he can leave the world that pained him behind to his students to nourish and give a final sacrifice for his equivalent exchange - the chaos hides personal order.

These two opposing ideas disclose the paralleling approaches anaxa and sunday take in regards to their ideals, and their differences in mental fortitude and personality. Anaxa is very self assured that his method will lead to his desired outcomes, marches entirely to the beat of his own drum, passing his thoughts to his cherished students and trusting them to continue what he doesn't believe he can survive to accomplish. Sunday, on the other hand, is defined by his insecurity, being surrounded by the hostile environment of the family, the younger figure thrust into a position of power through manipulation, and being forced to conform to it. Anaxa's figure is that of a teacher, an authority, while Sunday was inherently stuck in the position of a novice political figure, forced to sway according to the authorities around him.

Probably one of the most dominant aspects paralleling anaxa to sunday is both of their incredibly meaningful and impactful bonds they share with their sisters. While in sunday's case his bond takes central stage and in anaxa's stage we can only infer based on the little that is mentioned about it, I think it is no less significant to a thorough understanding of his character and motivations.

In both cases, two young siblings are left to fend off for themselves as their parents either die at the hands of war (sunday and robin) or decide to abandon their children (anaxa and his sister). And as such, they're each other's most meaningful connections in the world. Sunday owes robin his dream of a utopia, her ever supporter because her happiness is his, cementing his dedicating his life for the sake of others. In a similar vein, anaxa owes his sister his education, his access to knowledge, to experiments, to what is going to shape his life ambitions. However, I think what ties these characters further together is this sense of debt towards their sisters, in a way that feeds their selflessness and becomes their central means to achieve their goals.

Anaxa, in what I can infer from his character stories, genuinely views his life as disposable after his sister's death. His philosophical emphasis on equivalent exchange is, in large part, a reflection of his guilt towards his sister and her sacrifice - allowing him to study at the grove, at the expense of her own life the moment he left. In order for him to be worthy of her sacrifice - or the exchange to be equivalent - he must give away everything in order to achieve his goal. He must continuously chip away at his body, and his spirit, while insisting on retaining his heart and person, in order to make her death have meaning, for the rules of the world to make sense.

They're both so riddled with guilt, to the point it becomes their driving force. Both of their most significant human connections were to their sisters, feeling such an intense amount of debt towards both of them, that this sense of owing encourages them to keep chipping away at themselves in a subconscious effort to live up to both of their sister's "sacrifices" (robin's is more metaphorical). The kindness they received makes them eager to sacrifice more and more of themselves, creating a core of guilt that serves as their motivation to keep losing themselves for their grander goal.

The following portion of anaxa's 'chrysos' volume drew more parallels between the two in a way I can only interpret as being intentional, at the foremost through the use of the songbird motif. While sunday's charmony dove allegory bears no need to repeat, and I could write about it for hours, the following quote by anaxa is meaningful:

anaxa: I once carved a songbird that miraculously flapped its wings and took to the sky, though it circled five times at low altitude before falling...

As it is explicitly told, sunday's turning point in his life and ideology was finding charmony dove and having to confront the moral dilemma, a choice he viewed to be between freedom and security. His anxiety began to take root, as he had to watch the bird he nursed back to health attempt to fly again, and watch it plummet to its death, cementing in his minds that the weak, those he cherishes, are better kept secure than free. Ironically, he doesn't realise that he himself is stuck in such a cage, terrified of flying, and how his thought process ends up straining his relationship with the same person he so wishes to protect.

I don't think it's coincidental that anaxa chooses to emphasize the fact that the bird he manifested into life, also met its death a short amount of time after it was created by his hands. They're both left unsatisfied - they both must strive to do better, to either preserve life (sunday) or to create life (anaxa), so long as they can make sense of death. Both of these incidents end up solidifying and crystallizing their worldviews: they must sacrifice more of themselves in order to achieve their dreams. Be it a boundless utopia in sunday's case - posing himself as the sole guarding figure who shelters humanity from the terrors of existence regardless of the gods; or achieving transcendence and reaching an absolute truth in anaxa's case - by, similarly, posing himself as the one who must chip away at himself in order to prove, and give meaning, to humanity's existence regardless of the gods.

And perhaps most tragically, eventually, both sunday and anaxa were forced to sacrifice a part of themslves and lose the things they were most scared of losing. Anaxa, who was willing to sacrifice his physical well being, is forced to sacrifice his imprints on history and theory, sacrificing others memories of him, his legacy, his achievements. Sunday, whose drive for the betterment of others arose first and foremost from how much he cherished his only family, had to sacrifice his connection to her, the person closest to him, so he could protect her - they are torn apart, while ever present in each others' minds.

Something about these two, and their relationship to faith, the gods, their families, and worldviews, is deeply compelling in its similarity. They should meet up.

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Really good ep wahhh

Mollie...... I missed her so muchhh

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Mollie...... I missed her so muchhh

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i explained anaxa's lore to a friend the other day, and they said it was odd that anaxa, who had been intelligent even as a child, thought that an eye would be enough to save his sister. and i've been thinking about that, but i think it makes sense why anaxa wouldn't have grasped the law of equivalent exchange until later. let me explain:

anaxa, as a child, was not intelligent because he inherently knew how the world worked. he was intelligent because he refused to accept any truth until he could confirm it for himself. he didn't get along with other kids; he questioned priests and was confused when he was thrown out of temples. in other words, he never blindly accepted any social constructs or laws.

then, what did anaxa really believe about the world back then?

anaxa's early life seemed to be shaped by events he couldn't control. his parents departed without an explanation, people scoffed at his questions, and the black tide eventually took his home. in all of these cases, something was taken from him and nothing was ever given back. anaxa would have concluded, then, that loss was unpredictable.

on the other hand, his sister made it her goal to take him seriously, to give him what he needed despite her small income. from her, he received an unconditional love -- a love that he never saw the price for. a love he most likely assumed there was no price for. from this, he would've assumed that there was no inherent correlation between "loss" and "reward". he wouldn't have known about equivalent exchange, because nothing in his life had ever been an equivalent exchange.

and honestly that's probably why he now cares about equivalent exchange so much. because it is the one thing he can make sense of. even if it means giving up his body. the law of equivalent exchange gives him the control he never had as a child. it lets him understand all the things that he couldn't. it brings him a sense of relief, because it is so, so much easier to think the universe is logical than to accept that some tragedies happen for no reason at all.

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maomao~

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tho i will say its actually kind of incredible how atla is used as the bastion of western animation. the pinnacle. nothing lives up to it. how? its not perfect. it reuses tropes (in a good way!!!). watch an anime. etc. how is it the pinnacle of western animation? but at the same time, i cant actually list a better western cartoon when it comes to long form narrative storytelling. which baffles me because atla could literally be better. "zuko is the pinnacle of redemption arcs" i have literal critiques about it. its just like i swear there can be other shows like it. or similar. or on par. or better even because it was written by two white men in 2005. but i cannot list one.

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the ultimate price of anaxa's achievements is to be forgotten. in this essay late-night ramble i will

every one of anaxa's character stories ends with an indication that said story will be forgotten. for his first story, he snaps out of a flashback. his second (an experiment log) mentions that the original has already been destroyed. the third is an improvised speech -- never recorded, never practiced -- and the fourth story literally states that it is "One of the echoes in Anaxa's memories after the Grove had fallen, which vanished because nobody discovered it".

over and over again they tell us that there will be no record of his achievements, nobody to remember him when he's dead. and the heartbreaking part is that anaxa can come to terms with sacrificing his body, but he can't come to terms with sacrificing his memories. because anaxa desperately wants to be remembered. in as i've written, it's mentioned that he's able to laugh off his failures because his achievements will grant him a legacy that lasts for generations. and look at his experiment logs -- how organized they are, how diligently he must keep them, all so that his efforts are preserved. and, of course, why else would he insist on being called anaxagoras? to shorten a name is to forget something, and he can never risk that. because memories are all he has; having lost his family and sacrificed his physical form, what else is there?

but the thing is, anaxa has to be forgotten to succeed. in his last character story, he says this:

Yet, I have not lost enough… In comparison to what I pursue, I have not lost enough to fulfill the law of equivalent exchange.

so he knows he still has to lose something else. and later in the same story:

My future students, if you see these words, it proves that my endeavor has failed at the final step.

"if you see these words, I have failed." and in the context of his destroyed experimental logs, his interrupted flashback, his improvised speeches, we understand that the final price anaxa must pay is his legacy. the law of equivalent exchange is claiming the one thing he has worked towards all this time.

anaxa knows he's arrogant. but i'd like to think it's a desperate, tragic sort of arrogance, like the flare of a fire as it finds its last piece of kindling. please look at me. please remember me before it's too late.

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tired

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[ID: A digital illustration of Fire Lord Zuko holding a golden egg, his cheek against it. The atmosphere is dark, the egg lit up gold, along with Zuko's eyes and scar. End ID]

found a wip from a year ago ill definitely never be touching again

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I think anime reviews by anime critics are just inherently not good

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E1 with minimal pity both times. He wanted to come home so bad

Time for mr fragile twink scholar.

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Time for mr fragile twink scholar.

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Rewatching Apothecary Diaries and remembering how much I love these dorks