#it's worth checking out!

[rmorde]

Checked out Solo Leveling during Lobotomy Kaisen Week because... OMFG SAWANO IS THEIR COMPOSER?! I GOTTA SEE THIS!!!

Then I ended up binge-reading the entire manwha.

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS

Tho in all honesty, maybe I should have stopped by 179... Maybe 178 for that nice bittersweet ending. Chapters 180 and up are kinda cute especially the ones about the Shadows, (ex) Iron, and Jinchul. However, second gen stories are not really my cup of tea. Plus, the romance here is not exactly the best (for very understandable reasons).

The cast is really charming. I like Jinwoo because while he was really OP with a whole lot of stuff going his way, he still received some major Ls. They were few but they hit hard: his inability to save some people (especially Gunhee) and protecting his sister. It's why I kinda regret reading past 178. It's a crowning moment of sacrifice that balances out Jinwoo just winning 99% of the time. It's bittersweet (tho leaning more on the sweet tbh). I also kinda like a story ending with an inconclusive and seemingly eternal fight.

Most of the cast are memorable even if they have only a few moments to shine. While I wish they were given more spotlight, I understand the rushing of the story and having them sidelined almost completely. Apparently the artist was having health issues (?).

It's greatest asset are the art and action tho. Solo Leveling is just pure eye candy from start to finish. I love it so much. I'm tempted to buy a hardcopy but I don't know if digital comics translate well to print because of different panel styles.

So overall: Recommend. Easy story - not too complicated to understand which makes it perfect for binge-reading. Charming characters - MC is OP but not very annoying about it (maybe a bit with Jeju Arc). Most importantly: Consistent Stunning Art.* I hope the animation continues to give it justice - the Cartenon Temple massacre and Jinwoo vs Snake were really good. Praying they'd add more original scenes just to maybe flesh out the characters and their relationships just a tad bit more.

Also: BERU IS THE BEST!

*No wonder a lot of manwha artists took inspiration from Solo Leveling. I mean I don't read much of them aside Lookism plus I dropped True Beauty. The other manwha I read is kinda old (Ragnarok by Lee Myung-jin). However, a lot of thumbnails I saw were Solo-ish with their art style.

[catastrophic-crisis]

HPS1 demo disc was a pretty nice stream :)

[transannabeth]

btw if you borrow dvds or cds from library you can rip them onto your own blanks or onto your hard drive or whatever. librarians don’t care and they won’t know if you do it or not

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

Olive harvest in the West Bank. Photos by Ari Messinis, courtesy of Al Jazeera.

[ladysqueakinpip]

what started as the desire to draw The Donnies in their Iconic Purple Jackets just devolved into Donnie's Bizarre Adventures

[leroibobo]

in 1972, zeinab shaath released the EP "the urgent call of palestine". inspired by the contemporary counterculture movement, and the protest songs of bob dylan and joan baez in particular, the then-teenage shaath used her life experiences (she was the first member of her family born outside of palestine (specifically, in egypt) in 1954) to write the first english-language songs dedicated to palestinian liberation. in 1973, she'd even shot a four minute music video for the title track in collaboration with the PLO. the original master was siezed by the iof in the 1982 siege of beirut.

you can read the full story about her, the songs, and how both the ep and music video were only recently remastered for international listeners with help from the majazz project and discostan here. you can listen to it (and buy it, both physically and digitally, directly from her) on the bandcamp embed/link provided.

[mikkeneko]

Don't want to put this on the post itself for risk of derailing it, but that post the other day about Terry Pratchett's early work really stuck in my mind. OP had sent in an ask saying that they heard some of Pratchett's earlier works had problematic elements (not unusual for a male english writer in the 80s) and they weren't sure whether to go ahead with reading the work anyway.

What I really want to ask that person, or indeed all persons who are hesitating over whether or not to read problematic works or works by imperfect authors:

What are you worried about happening, if you read a work with problematic elements?

I'm worried that if I read this art, I will run across hateful images or words that will shock or upset me

I'm worried that I will spend money on a work of art that then financially supports a bad person, and that thought makes me uncomfortable or upset

I'm worried that I will read works of art written by a bad person, and comment or react on them, and other people will see what I am reading and will think less of me because of it, or will assume that I hold the same bad beliefs as the author

I'm worried that I will read works of art written by a bad person, and I will enjoy them, and the author will find out about my enjoyment and feel emboldened to do bad things because of it

I'm worried that I will read works of art written by a bad person, and their badness will contaminate my way of thinking and make me a worse person in turn

Because these are all different answers and some of them are more actionable than others

[shouty-y]

L’idylle 🌾💛- My full piece for "Classics but Make it Gay III"

[ispyspookymansion]

hello hello! if youre usamerican with federal college debt thats about to start needing to be repaid, you should make sure youve gone to check out the new SAVE income based repayment plan the biden administration recently passed. this plan allows you to pay a monthly deposit that’s calculated based on your income. a few things make this different from the existing income based plans, including that your monthly repayment could be as low as $0 per month. if you pay the calculated amount, no further interest is accrued for the month, and if you keep up with these payments (which again, if youre like me and you dont make a lot of money might be ZERO dollars per month) then all your remaining debt will be forgiven after 12-25 years depending on your specific loans. the program application is very easy but processing takes about a month, so nows the time to get it in before repayment begins in november.

tldr: the SAVE federal aid plan can have you paying $0/month with no accruing interest on your student loans towards a guaranteed debt forgiveness after 12-25 years and you can read more about it and apply for it here!

[ccircusclwn]

trying to figure them out is soooo hard........ anyways heres my (probably not final) jesse n lukas designs (theyre literally the same as the game okay)

[keldae]

I got one of @javsarts's commission slots and OMG THIS IS AMAZING. I absolutely LOVE everything about this picture! The pose! The smiles! The colours! How gorgeous they made both Gale and Devi look! Thank you so much for making my Tav and her wizard look SO amazing!!

When their slots are open again, definitely jump in for art by them -- LOOK AT THIS!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

YES! JOIN ME IN THE DELCIOUS DUNGEONS!

[soupskkn]

A long day’s light

comic doodles of @calchexxis ‘s fics!

Twitter | Instagram

[hedgehog-moss]

In other news, this week a French publisher on his way to the London Book Fair was arrested by British counter-terrorist police to be questioned about his participation in protests in France.

A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.

Moret arrived at St Pancras [...] with his colleague Stella Magliani-Belkacem, the editorial director at the Paris-based publishing house, to be confronted by the two officers. [...] He was questioned for six hours and then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer. [...] He was transferred to a police station in Islington, north London, where he remained in custody on Tuesday. He was later released on bail.

Éditions la Fabrique is known for publishing radical left authors. Moret also represents the French science fiction novelist Alain Damasio and had arranged more than 40 appointments at the London book fair. [...]

[Quoting publishing house’s press release] “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make, and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.” [...] “There’s been an increasingly repressive approach by the French government to the demonstrations, both in terms of police violence, but also in terms of a security clampdown.”

(Guardian link - BBC link) (article in French)

The publishing house (here’s their latest statement in French) and the publisher’s lawyer mention that the British police asked him “Do you support Emmanuel Macron? Did you attend protests against the pension reform?” and he was also asked to name the authors with anti-government views that his employer has published. They add, “Asking the representative of a publishing house, in the framework of counter-terrorism, about the opinions of his authors, is pushing even further the logic of political censorship and repression of dissenting thought. In a context of social protests and authoritarian escalation on the part of the French government, this aspect [of the questioning] is chilling.”

Being an accomplice to thoughtcrime by publishing dissident authors gets you treated like an international terrorist now... The publisher’s lawyer suggests that French authorities asked the UK to help them get their hands on the publisher’s contacts in the radical left sphere. But on the face of it, we’ve got: Exercise your right to protest your government in France -> get arrested by counter-terrorist UK police in London. That’s literally the reason he was given for being greeted by police at the train station...

[mllenugget]

Hello I mcyt fandom-ified la Team du Lundi members and wrote a shit ton of text about it

After exhausting myself on trying to catch up on the current QSMP lore I got a sudden craving for a more familiar and fast paced kind of minecraft content and ended up rewatching all the Team du Lundi's SMP best of's I could find

And while doing so with my brain still hazed in fandom brainrot, I started picking up on minor details or info the players casually dropped, and drew parallels to the French speakers' QSMP counterparts This is going to be a long wordy post I don't even know what I am rambling about and for. Three things you need to be aware of about la Team du Lundi before reading :

Baghera, Antoine and Etoiles are the only QSMP players that are part of la Team du Lundi

As far as I remember the only two elements that suggest that la Team du Lundi's SMP could be canon to QSMP are Antoine being pressured into building another Tower of Shit, and Baghera's infamous fountain being mentioned when she was asked if her character remembers anything from her past before the island

La Team du Lundi's SMP was NOT a roleplaying server, it was just a private survival server for a small circle of friends casually playing together. So whenever I quote someone in this specific post, it is the streamer : there is no character other than the persona the streamer is usually showing on stream, but I just thought it would be fun to interpret certain situations while keeping in mind the QSMP lore. And here goes :

Baghera claims that when she was a kid she strongly believed that she could breathe underwater. The others joke about her having fins

Antoine jokingly tells Baghera he doesn’t need oxygen at all

Antoine claims he will still be alive thousands of years forwards

Antoine’s voice shifts when he wants to appear creepy

Baghera built an aquarium at her place, then helped Antoine build one at his tower, then built a giant swimming pool, then a fountain, then a waterslide- do you see a theme ?

Baghera knows that her skin is actually that of a chick and not a duckling, and calls it so here

Chat said that Baghera has a middle child syndrome, justifying that she bullies Angle Droit because Etoiles bullies her in the first place (Etoiles has also called her « little sister » in a derogatory way)

Etoiles has repeatedly asked people to play Valorant with him at least once

Here's a clip of Etoiles getting languaged in french and owing "a gifted sub in the swear jar"

Unrelated random clip of Etoiles because it creates happy hormones in me brain

Etoiles is regularly refered to as "the warrior"

Etoiles guided the whole group during an expedition to the End and he was literally glowing doing so (enchanted arrows effect) Everyone called him "the guide"

Baghera was the one who gave the final blow to the Enderdragon (and died from magic right after)

Etoiles spent most of his time adventuring in order to bring stuff and gear back to everyone for their builds

Etoiles asked Aypierre for help in order to design a redstone door for his cave which could only open upon solving a puzzle (which was egg & arrow related) (Aypierre was not a member of the server)

Etoiles built a nightclub with the walls and ceiling covered in wardenblocks making it look like a starry sky. He also rehomed Allays holding golden apples inside claiming them to be the souls working for him and that they lived there peacefuly

Etoiles jokingly talks about Antoine acting jealous and violent towards him because Etoiles told him he wanted to go and visit Kameto (who also was not a member of the server)

Baghera (along with Horty) had a rivalry with Joueur du Grenier (host of the server with admin powers) after he decided to build a massive parking lot right next to their house. They countered by covering the whole thing with dirt, followed by JDG building a factory and the two parties went back and forth. Baghera argued that it was stupid because they didnt even have cars to begin with (which is a sentence she reused when talking about Forever's roads) Also she tells JDG that he could've built a seaport instead, which makes JDG contemplate the thought of building an airport (and though he ended up never building it, I am side eyeing the French's plane crash)

At some point JDG wonders about what a roleplaying minecraft server would look like (RPZ 2), to which Baghera replies that she has a hard time picturing the thing "We'd all just build things you see ? I don't think we'd create stories, we would all just be like "I'm a builder, ah you too ? Well awesome, builders, cool"" and I find this to be hilariously ironic (fun fact : Baghera had no idea that QSMP was a roleplaying server when she first joined and often claims she would've taken a different approach with her character had she known right off the gate)

As I was finishing to write this down, these fuckers (/lh) decided to host a closure night for the server as they've never really officially did it, everyone just sort of deserted the server after a while. Baghera, Etoiles and Antoine kept referring to QSMP throughout the night, mostly talking about how weird it felt without mods. Among other meta commentary things

They mentionned Cellbit and Bad multiple times as the group was trying to solve enigmas. Antoine talked about "the cultural sharing" between communities as he taught insults to each others with Mike, Roier and Maximus in their respective languages Multiple more players were namedropped (including eggs) while Antoine was talking about how the server functions

Yes, Baghera and Etoiles kept their QSMP skins. Etoiles with his code corrupted purgatory one, and Baghera with her fading pink disheveled hair (with the addition of her cubito wearing Horty's merch)

Baghera admits that going back to this small familiar vanilla server feels like coming back home to your family during the holidays

Team du Lundi's cameos in QSMP :

Though Pomme has never canonically met JDG (even though most of her parents have talked about him to her at least once), she occasionaly breaks the 4th wall to refer to him. She once compared one of BBH's "vacation" flower shirts with his, and when Foolish and Bad asked her to elaborate (obviously not getting the reference) she proceeded to play JDG's music theme with the flute instead (Also I really feel the need to once more point out how mindblowing it is for your average french speaking viewer to have JDG's intro theme being added to the mod they use in the QSMP because of how anchored it is within french internet pop culture. Like this shit has been existing for 14 fucking years, it's part of the childhood of a lot of us, so to find a clip of British hardcore player Philza peacefuly listening to Mexican egg admin Tallulah play this theme on her flute feels like a multiverse fever dream)

Horty has been on Quesadilla Island through cc!Baghera's account, but neither of them really wanted to justify it RP wise. Baghera just wanted to give her best friend a tour of the island. Horty only got to meet Richarlyson who gave her a tour of Cellbit's castle and made her pick a room (she chose Chaos). She also chatted with Etoiles who tagged along for a bit and (this is obviously justified by it being a one-shot out of roleplay filler episode kind of night) they both already knew each other and were on friendly enough terms to bicker with one another Also she was part of the French speakers Quackity reached out to to invite on the server, but she had to decline because she was very busy at that time (and also not interested) Also also she was Baghera's teammate for that Formula 4 event, and Baghera has discussed it and showed pictures to a couple of islanders, including Richas who was very hyped about it

Another player the viewers were hoping to see on Quackity's server is Mynthos. He exists within the server with the picture of him that hangs in Pomme's art gallery, the cursed animation video that used to play in La France, as well as with Aypierre's health potion factory that bears his name

Angle Droit and Zerator are sometimes namedropped when the French speakers talk with their chat. Angle Droit frequently raids Baghera's and Antoine's streams, and though it has never been confirmed, a lot of viewers theorized that she was the +1 player Baghera and Etoiles wanted to invite on the server had they won the elections.

As for Zera, Etoiles went AFK on QSMP a couple of times in order to test some of Zerator's TrackMania maps (which he later discussed with Pac). I also remember a very trivial conversation Etoiles had with Mouse and Aypierre where he laughed about hurting his back very badly after carrying a fellow streamer during a caritative event, said event was hosted by Zerator (he's also the one judging them with concern from his desk)

I'm done.

Bonus alternative design for Angle Droit because at first I thought she was a fox then it turned out she was a corgi but then she changed it again to a fox and woop

[simikae]

four hundred and ninety yen