#did you need it?

[ziglikesrain]

alrightyyy i think it might be time to step up and give my two cents on the hatred the marauders fandom receives. i’ve (1) received a death threat??? on tumblr?? for being a marauders fan?? which actually made me giggle a little bit bc you’re telling me to kill myself for liking gay wizards from the 70s? cmon now. that’s a bit silly. a silly goose move, if you will.

and, (2) i watched a group of kids in the queer lit class i TA for bully a student because they liked the marauders. (not bc they thought it was cringy, but bc of its association with jk rowling). OKAY Y’ALL. NO. you can hate on me, an adult, i can take it, but a fifteen year old? they’re fifteen! they don’t owe you anything! being a teenager is for fawning over books and other stupid things. LET THEM LIVE!!

so i supposed now was a good time to give my thoughts, because even though i know it’s not going to, i think this discourse is genuinely childish and needs to end.

when it comes down to it, what matters here is queer joy. if you look past the fact that the marauders fandom is made up almost exclusively of headcannons, and jk rowling pretty much hates our guts, what actually matters is that people are happy. i’m being so real when i say that the VAST MAJORITY of marauders fans are queer — we needed a safe, inclusive space away from the golden trio era and all the problems that THEY have — and so what that gives you is angry queer people yelling at other queer people for being ??homophobic??

jk rowling is a horrible, awful, transphobic person. no one disagrees here. people are being hurt by her actions, and queer joy is being diminished. but then you have marauders fans, who are enjoying works that are created (only) by fans, and making this amazing space for fellow queer people. the passion that people have for these characters is the epitome of queer joy, and i just can’t wrap my head around why other queer people would want to spread more hatred and sadness by telling them they can’t enjoy something they love.

we need to wake up and realize that we’ve been sucked into this vicious cycle that jkr has perpetuated. by being angry at people who have virtually no connection to her, you give her what she wants, which is to spread hate within the LGBTQ community. i simply see no need to be spiteful towards people because of what they love. it’s the antithesis of everything queer culture stands for.

there is so much hatred in the world, especially right now, and i feel like it applies to everything and everyone when i say that there is no need, under any circumstances, to be actively hateful towards people who are just living their lives. want to send hate mail to jk rowling herself? be my fucking guest. but stop harassing people you don’t know over the internet over a problem they didn’t cause and are doing nothing to spread.

takeaways because i know that was long and tedious to read:

- jk rowling does not profit from marauders fanfiction or fanart

- marauders fans hate her just as much as you do

- if you go online to spread hate towards people, you are doing the exact. same. thing. that she is.

- a vast majority of marauders fans are queer, you’re barking up the wrong tree by calling us homophobic or transphobic

- just don’t harass people on the internet. or in person. why do you need me to tell you that????????

- if u are a queer person attacking queer people because of jk rowling, you’re giving her what she wants

- spread queer joy! it’s that simple my loves

[sunbentshadows]

Hey all, you know how internet searches suck now? When the results are awful, full-of-AI, death-of-the-internet levels of bad?

Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".

My results have gone from 90% AI bullshit to ~60% usable - which frankly at this point is a huge improvement.

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[jabberwick]

Human Bill Cipher

(Based on Alex Hirsch's "canon" design)

And just to be clear, writing dissertations at me justifying why he should instead be a conventionally attractive twink will involuntarily cause me to draw him with even fewer teeth.

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[chessb0r3d]

Analysis so bad you don't even know what it's talking about anymore.

[artkaninchenbau]

A h-heartfelt reunion..?

Bonus

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dog Meshi.

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Obsessed with characters who portray themselves as worse than they are. Who are lying to everyone including themselves about it. People generally assume if someone's lying about themselves they're trying to look better but sometimes they're trying to look worse. They attribute agency to where they had none, add intent to accidents, try to convince everyone that this is something they did instead of something that happened to them.

[katsinspats]

Thematically appropriate comic for Make a Terrible Comic Day!!

I saw the original post this morning and it made me get out of bed to make something, so thank u Pseudonym Jones mission accomplished

[cozylittleartblog]

"content creator" is a corporate word.

we are artists.

[madohomurat]

trans women are everywhere and are so eager to be seen and heard but only if they feel safe around you. if you hardly ever have trans women interacting with you, especially online, then consider there might be a reason for that and you should address it

[ninjasmudge]

thats a red flag narinder, get that crown back while you still can

+ top panel without text below the cut

[egophiliac]

(looks at upcoming card releases)

I'm in danger :)