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[lazaefair]

It bothers me how many people are morally incurious, and it bothers me even more how many people seem to think that interrogating morality is proof of immorality- because I'm pretty sure that the latter is at least partly driving the former. Asking why an action or institution is wrong does not necessarily mean that someone thinks that that action or institution is right. If you never ask yourself why something is wrong or right, then what is determining your morality? Because it's not you.

[lazaefair]

Thanks for the question, Anon!

For me, I only go braless at home, even if others are there.

-submit your poll!-

[lazaefair]

When I made this post just ten days ago, it was about mass graves discovered at Al Shifa hospital and now we have learned that the same had happened at Nasser hospital in Gaza. The same genocidal pattern: a hospital is put under siege, patients and medical staff are abducted, tortured and buried in mass graves.

But to build on the last point I wanted to bring attention to in the previous post, it is very crucial to also keep in mind is that the Palestinian Civil Defence have reported that Israel had deliberately concealed the identities of those it killed and buried in these mass graves. Close to 400 bodies have been buried in these mass graves, 58% of the recovered bodies have not been identified.

In a press conference, a spokesperson of the civil defence in Gaza said that Israel had intentionally disfigured the bodies postmortem in order to remove any identifying markers such as birthmarks. He also mentioned that they suspect that the bodies have been placed in body bags that expedited the decomposition process, destroying any possibility of them being identified.

One of the main and only ways families have been able to identify the bodies of their loved ones is through the clothes they remember them wearing the last time they saw them. I saw a video of a mother identifying her son by his striped jacket. You can see the grief mixed with relief that she will be able to give her son proper burial.

Remember when months ago I said that to be identified and buried in Gaza has become a luxury? This is very much still the case.

[lazaefair]

Tolkien survived World War I (he based the Dead Marshes on the incredibly grisly battlefields of the Battle of the Somme) and had to endure sending his son off to World War II. Many of his dear friends died in WWI. He knew about kings and empires and the destruction brought down by powerful people pursuing power, especially upon “the plain soldier from the agricultural counties.”

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

[lazaefair]

Blanky mode

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

LOOK AT HIM 😭😭😭

[lazaefair]

yusuf icons pls! it bright colours. maybe yellows and pinks.

ty for the request bb

icon requests are open!

[lazaefair]

hey. hey. Star Wars old guard (this is what early clone wars animation looks like. to me. I love it.)

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Joe And Nicky

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from my tog archive :)

[lazaefair]

"Uh, well" Nicky struggles, from the other side of the world. "Are you doing well? How is the flat?"

It's their first call since Joe left, and Joe already misses the easy way he can get Nicky to relax, in person, just by chattering away for a few minutes while the other organises his thoughts. Nicky only needs time to find the words, but he's not the silent type, though other think he is; though Joe thought as much, when they met through Andy four years before.

Thinking about 2020 leaves him with a mix of emotions, mostly negative, and a lot of fuzziness at the edges of his memories. He remembers a lot, but not everything, though only four years have passed. He has forgotten huge chunks of that year, depression eating away most of that summer, but he remembers meeting Nicky. He thinks back at their talks from opposite balconies, and his heart swells with a misplaced nostalgia that should not exist. That exists in a weird limbo, like that whole year.

["You live in front of Nicky, that's crazy."

"Like destiny," Nicky said, voice relapsing into a heavy Italian accent after the third glass of wine. He was smiling. Joe, who thought Andy's idea of having group videocalls over dinner would give him work meetings flashbacks, stared at the tiny rectangle of Nicky's face for a whole minute.

"What?" Nicky asked, blinking slowly. Staring back at Joe through the screen.

"Quynh is right, don't cut your hair. Everybody is trying to grow a mustache and manbun combo."

It was not an outright compliment, but Nicky tucked his hair behind his ear like he'd just received one.

Joe had asked for his number at the end of the dinner. Two days later, they were sharing the view of their street from their balconies, wondering if they could reach each other with paper planes.]

"There's a nice balcony," Joe says, "I share it with my roommate."

"Nile," Nicky remembers, "Art major. Plays soccer."

"Asked me to ask you about that vegetarian lasagne recipe."

"You told her about me?"

Joe's heart aches, all at once like he imagines stabbing must feel like. Of course he talked about Nicky, though they haven't shared the same street for two years (Nicky moved, and Joe gave the new rooms a layer of white, pristine paint, like a fresh start). Nile already knows who Nicky is, a side character in most of Joe's anecdotes. His name comes up as frequently as Andy's, who grew up with Joe. Isn't that incredible?

"Of course."

There's not much else he can say without ruining their fragile truce. Joe is one ocean away, and while they survived seeing each other from afar for one and a half years, smoking from opposite sides of the street with phones pressed to their ears so they didn't have to scream, this would be different. It would complicate everything; Joe's new job, his new life, would lose their shiny novelty and become a in-between, a parenthesis between visists to see Nicky. He'd leave one foot in Italy and one in the US, and what good would that be?

He has started to forget bits of their best year, 2023 with its strange summer of scorching heat, and he feels terrible about it. Grief claws at his heart. He will never get that moment back, he explained to Nile one night when they were both fragile, not the flat, not the dinners with Andy, Quynh and Nicky, not the cigarettes shared on the same balcony, this time, elbows touching. Andy moved, Nicky is working, Quynh went back home and plans on saving the turtles. (So many marine biologists want to save the turtles, Joe complained to Nile with unshed tears at 3 a.m., what about me? Am I not a turtle?)

He will never go back to that setting, so what good would it be, to be back in Italy and walk in their old street and know their flats now belong to someone else? The opposite balconies, now empty of Nicolò's flowers and Joe's red drying rack, wouldn't the sight of them fill him with twice as much sadness?

Nicky is far away. Hearing is voice brings an automatic smile to his face. While Joe let his sad thoughts get the best of him, Nicky has been telling him of some drama at his church, not about his coming out but something else, inconsequential, something about Letizia and her nagging and old Bicocca that can't shut up. Joe would love Nicky's gossiping side even grey and old talking about people long dead or in a nursing home.

"Tell me if you can visit this summer, okay?" Joe interrupts him. "Even if it's not exactly here, I can meet you halfway."

Is this breaking the truce already?

He can't go back to Nicky's old flat, in front of his. Have the new tenants fixed the hole in the hallway, the one they covered with a Mondrian print?

He cannot, most egregious pain of all, hug Nicky. Kiss him again, to wear off the novelty of their first/goodbye kiss.

Is he getting ahead of himself yet again, hoping to save a past he is not ready to let go just yet?

Five months ago he was kissing Nicky, but he also did not know Nile.

"It's not fair," he finds himself saying. "To love all these people, and never getting to see them all the same table."

Nicky inhales, the sound shaky and almost imperceptible, and Joe knows he is thinking about Booker. The time for full reunions is lost to them forever.

"I will love you even if I never see you again."

There it is, Nicky when the awkwardness thaws. When he's just Joe's, even one ocean away.

"But I will visit. And I will send the recipe to Nile, if you give me her number."

In a few months, Nicky will meet Nile, and their world will have another before and after. Joe has to believe it is worth the pain of that after, missing each other with a phone pressed to the ear so they don't have to speak loudly. Wondering if they can reach each other through love and stubborness and texts alone.

He hopes they will be alright. That tomorrow morning, when making coffee will have him think of home, the only emotion coming up will be relief.

[lazaefair]

Nicky’s sword is as big or small as I want it to be

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Thinking about Yusuf and Nicolò as young men again

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Joe & Nicky THE OLD GUARD (2020)

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🎀

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Joenicky for a royalty AU prompt. A knight and his prince..

[lazaefair]

Today's flavor of insanity is brought to you by the fact that we only get ONE scene where Joe and Nicky are alone in a room. And it's in a fucking lab where they're being held hostage and Nicky was being tortured in it literally less than 5 minutes ago. And yet all it takes is for Joe to say ONE line (one fucking line. Hell, it's one word) and Nicky laughs unabashed for the ONLY time in the entire movie. He laughs unabashed and he even snorts and he looks more relaxed and open than at any other point, including the bet. Because it's just him and Joe and when it's just him and Joe he can allow himself to let every guard down, which he doesn't do even when he sleeps because he sleeps with a gun, but somehow, in the middle of the enemy's lair, after being tortured, Nicky can allow himself to relax enough to ugly laugh. Because it's just him and Joe and as long as it's just him and Joe he doesn't have to keep himself in check