#I don't have much choice

[kasumingo]

hate that me requiring a special diet means i either have to spend all my adhd spoons and time meal prepping OR spending almost all my pay minus bills for box diet that will ensue i will always eat on time and eat healthy

[starwood-stranded]

Well, my lorelocke is over again ... The rolls I got today leave only 1 dragon alive.

[inkskinned]

hey btw if you're in the USA at  2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4, they're testing the emergency broadcast system. your phone is probably going to make a really loud noise, even if it's on silent. there's a backup date on the 11th if they need to postpone it.

if you're not in a safe situation and have an extra phone, you should turn that phone completely off beforehand.

additionally, if you're like me, and are easily startled; i recommend treating it like a party. have a countdown or something. be surrounded by your loved ones. take the actions you personally need to take to make yourself safe.

i have already seen mockery towards any person who feels nervous about this. for the record, it completely, completely valid to have "emergency broadcast sounds" be an anxiety trigger. do not let other people make fun of you for that. emergency sounds are legitimately engineered to make us take action; those of us with high levels of anxiety and/or neurodivergence are already pre-disposed to have a Bad Time. sometimes it is best to acknowledge that the situation will be triggering for some, and to prepare for that; rather than just saying "well that's stupid, it's just a test."

"loud scary sound time" isn't like, my favorite thing, but we can at least try to prevent some additional anxiety by preparing for it. maybe get yourself a cake? noise cancelling headphones? the new hozier album? whatever helps. love u, hope you're okay. we are gonna ride it out together.

[lucabyte]

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

Bonus:

[egophiliac]

Please elaborate on your twst Pokémon headcannons I’m very interested

I had planned on drawing everyone for this (I made a LIST!) but it. hasn't been going well. 💀 soooo here's what I have so far!

Riddle - Roserade (I was going with 'no legendaries', otherwise I would've given him a Shaymin) (and I don't think Togedemaru is actually a hedgehog or I would've given him one of those too) (...they kind of do fit though. hmm.)

Trey - Alcremie (clover/mint cream + strawberry/ruby cream)

Cater - DITTO SQUAD! DITTO SQUAD! DITTO SQUAD!

Ace - Impidimp (I feel like there's probably a better one for him, but I can't think of it)

Deuce - Scraggy (meanwhile I KNOW deep in my heart that this is true)

Leona - Pyroar (but like. a nasty Pyroar. just a grizzly old Pyroar with the shittiest attitude imaginable. they pretend to hate each other but secretly they are a bonded pair, do not separate)

[bitegore]

Zionists want you to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Zionists want you to believe that Judaism cannot exist without Zionism and that all Jews are Zionists. Zionism would have Jews believe that a Jewish state is the only way that they can be safe from antisemitism and will point to any instance of antisemitism as proof that Zionism is the solution- so Zionism wants gentiles to be antisemitic in their support of Palestine. They want you to conflate all Jews with Zionism and the state of Israel, and they want you to treat all Jews regardless of political affiliation as the face of Israel. Antizionist Jews exist, and incidences of antisemitism ostensibly acting against Zionism will not help dismantle the forces propping Zionism up.

Don't do their work for them.

[mistress-light]

This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[arcadeplayer-nickonz]

i was listening to TV Girl and suddenly i was compelled to drew these bastards

they suit the post valentines mood

[canisalbus]

Imagine if Machete was Muslim instead of Catholic. His name would be something like Saif سيف, and Vasco would probably be something like Dhahabi ذَهَبِيّ

.

[anghraine]

This is unnecessarily long, but: I was just thinking about Wickham's predation on fifteen-year-old Georgiana Darcy and then, almost exactly a year later, Wickham's predation on sixteen-year-old Lydia Bennet.

There are obvious parallels between the two incidents. In fact, they're so obvious that I think the incidents are sometimes treated as equivalent, with the consequences only differing by happenstance. I don't think that's true, personally.

There are some mechanistic sort of differences—Wickham put a lot more effort and planning into the Georgiana situation. He wanted to marry her for her money and to make her brother suffer. She had to be isolated from people who would look out for her interests, he had Mrs Younge in place, he had known Georgiana as a child and was able to exploit his own previous kindness to her as her father's godson, etc.

And Georgiana, despite all of this, and despite being swept away by a teenage infatuation with an extremely attractive man, was still uncomfortable with it. She was worried about disappointing a brother who raised her and whom she deeply loves and admires. When her brother actually showed up by surprise, she decided to tell him everything; Darcy takes pains to give her credit for this. Adaptations generally downplay Georgiana's active decision-making here, but the only element of chance is Darcy deciding to go to Ramsgate at all. He insists that he was only able to act because Georgiana chose to tell him what was going on.

This isn't meant to be an indictment of Lydia, though. Does she admire the parents who raised her? No. But why would she? Especially why would she admire a father who treats her mother and sisters and herself with profound contempt and no sense of responsibility? Why would she ever confide in him?

It's not like Lydia doesn't confide in anyone. In fact, she too confides in an older sibling, her sister Kitty. And in one sense, her trust in Kitty is not undeserved. Kitty does keep the secret. Presumably, she does this because, despite her occasional annoyance with Lydia, she is very much under her influence and goes along with whatever Lydia does. Regardless, she is trustworthy in that sense. Moreover, we see at the end of the book that Kitty is easily improved by being placed in better environments and taught how to behave. She just didn't know better.

How was she going to judge Lydia's situation correctly? Who was teaching her to judge anything correctly? Certainly not their parents.

If Mr Bennet had bothered to interest himself in his younger daughters and try and influence them for the better, impressionable Kitty is probably the one who would have benefited the most. The whole Lydia/Wickham thing would have fallen apart before it went anywhere if all the girls had been been properly raised, even if Lydia did exactly the same things.

And Lydia likely wouldn't do the same things if she'd been brought up properly and, you know, treated with a baseline of respect rather than being openly mocked by her father, the person most able to affect her development. Instead, at barely sixteen, she's been continually rejected by her father, over-indulged by her mother, and flattered by adult men (28-y-o Darcy says he and Wickham are nearly the same age). And she still tells someone what's going on, even though she doesn't care about her parents' opinions or the consequences of her actions. And she was under the protection of a colonel and his wife at the time, who also could have told someone or acted, and didn't.

It's not that nobody could have done anything about the Lydia/Wickham situation. It's that nobody did until Darcy found out and tried to extract her. But it was, in one sense, too late. To Lydia, he's just some unfun acquaintance who says boring things like "go home to your family and I'll do what I can to cover for you." That is, he tries to do what he did for Georgiana.

But Lydia is not Georgiana—she did not choose to tell him about any of this. She did not want to be extracted because she didn't know and couldn't be quickly made to understand what marriage to Wickham would mean in the long term. And she didn't care what her family thought because she had no reason to, pragmatically or psychologically.

Georgiana, otoh, did care about her family's welfare and the good opinion and affection of the head of her family. But despite their radical differences in personality, the most fundamental difference between the girls IMO is that Georgiana had every reason to believe that disappointing Darcy and losing his respect would be a change from the norm.

Normally he is affectionate and attentive towards her. They write each other long letters, he defends her to other family members, and praises her frequently. Georgiana, quiet and intimidated though she may be, talks more when he's around. Disappointing him had actual stakes for her.

Put another way, the potential loss of his good opinion mattered to her because he's gone to the trouble of raising her as well as he can and forming a good relationship with her. She chose to tell Darcy the whole thing because he had earned her affection and trust in a way that Mr Bennet has utterly failed to do. Even Darcy happening to visit Georgiana at Ramsgate comes from his affection and attention to Georgiana's welfare, even if he couldn't have known what would follow from checking on his sister at that particular moment.

Chance is always part of life, and it's part of the novel and these situations. But a lot of how these scenarios wound out was not determined by chance but by long-existing patterns in these girls' educations and relationships.

[tempests-bards-and-birds]

did you know that the power of water is its ability to take any shape? did you know that without solid ground, terrestrial creatures become simply helpless? did you know that one who is ignorant of water's treasures also fails to comprehend its horrors? did you know that the power of water is its ability to take any shape? did you know that the power of water is its ability to take any shape? did you kno-

[egophiliac]

this chapter has been so absolutely nuts that I actually low-key forgot that I had a couple of new UM posters to do! wild! anyway, I gotta think about Lilia's some more, so here is my beautiful electric crocodile son in the meantime. god I hope this reads properly

(I went with Volt to go with his name, but there's a Bolt version too in the print-size folder!)

[tvboxi]

it breaks my heart how everyone in this fandom is so happy to forgive and forget terrible things old moon, eclipse, bloodmoon, ruin, puppet, monty, literally everyone else has done, but nexus is where they draw the line at the possibility of being 'redeemed'.

like, bloodmoon killin people? meh, whatever. ruin destroying 5000+ dimensions? he was doing it for the greater good, he can still be redeemed! eclipse terrorizing and trying to kill sun and moon over and over? well he's making an effort now and the way he was treated was bad, so it's all okay. old moon treating sun the way he did for so long? he's had time to think and is doing better now, he's a good guy!

but nexus- nope. almost killed earth as collateral damage (like he wasn't even aiming for her at all) so he is just an evil guy now and can't ever be helped.

like, dude was so happy in the beginning until all the expectations of being like old moon but better were shoved onto him. he did so much to make sure everyone was happy and safe, even tried to forgive and forget with ruin, only for ruin to have been lying the whole time. then he looses solar, tries everything to get him back, finds out the one way to do that but can't, goes into his head to talk to old moon who basically tells him to die for his family to keep them happy, goes back to trying to get solar back by killing blood moon who has done pretty much nothing but cause problems, but then everyone is like, 'yknow, the best thing do do right now would be to just lock him up!'. then sun comes along and tells the computer to just fuckin shock him if he uses star power, monty come by too and says he's gonna talk to old moon, nexus is like 'no, i refuse' and monty actually shocks him into unconsciousness anyways to do it. puppet and monty want to bring old moon back, which would basically get rid of nexus, but i guess they think when they kill its 'justified enough' (but nexus trying to bring back solar isn't justified to them for some reason). then nexus finally snaps and goes to get bloodmoon, puppet gets him first, and then they send nexus to space. he joins dark sun who acually treats him like his own person, starts using negative starpower which is very very harmful to him, and he has a new look now to show that he is in fact not just a different version of the old moon and is his own person.

but yes, he's' just going through a stupid emo phase hahaha.

[chroniccomplainerlol]

Really unpopular opinion that arose after rewatching season 3 and 4 of LMK, but it annoys me to no end that Macaque barely did anything to improve (hasn't even apologized to MK lol) and basically got no consequences for his actions and yet he still got his redemption served to him on a silver platter.

Not to mention how much the fandom sugarcoats what he did, but I can't really blame them because the show is kinda doing it by itself considering the other characters' reactions. Like, you mean to tell me that Mei, of all people, would gladly fight side by side with Macaque?

Actually, why is the entire group so… casual around him as if they didn't watch the mf beat the shit out of MK right in front of them?

Highlight to Mei and Pigsy cause they are the first ones to call out Wukong about his mistakes, and them doing that while also giving Macaque a pass after everything he did to them makes no sense.

And it annoys me even more because there were villains/antagonists who could have easily had a redemption arc but got killed off instead.

Also the same thing happened with the Demon Bull Family: They hurt and tried to kill MK and many lives were at risk because of them, but guess what? No consequences lmao they're all besties now.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Something interesting I've noticed about conversion stories is many people seem to have both a rebellious streak and a deep-seated, insatiable desire to learn everything.

One of my shul's well-respected members (who runs the hebrew/judaism class that will start soon) talked about how, when he lived in my town, he would sneak out of the house just to go to shul. That's what I'm doing now, and it's funny (I'm not sneaking out per se, but I am also not telling anybody I'm going to shul). There's an aspect of free-spiritedness that I notice in many converts, and it's fascinating to hear each of their stories. And you know the funniest part? They sound like my story.