#long-term commitment

[dc-probate-attorney]

Growing Old Together: The Beauty of Long-Term Commitment

In a world where change is constant and the future is uncertain, there’s something profoundly reassuring about the concept of growing old together. Long-term commitment, a testament to enduring love and unwavering partnership, is a journey that transcends the passage of time. It’s about weathering life’s storms hand in hand and finding beauty in the shared moments, both big and small. In this…

[hsmagazine254]

Revitalizing Romance: Rediscovering Passion In Long-Term Relationships - H&S Love Affair

Nurturing Intimacy & Connection In Lifelong Love In the journey of marriage, maintaining a spark of romance and passion is essential for nurturing a strong and lasting bond between partners. While the initial stages of a relationship may be filled with excitement and novelty, long-term commitment requires intentional effort to keep the flame alive. Here’s how married couples can revitalize…

[brother-emperors]

SO this! is about this specific entry in Burchard's Diary--

The Diary of John Burchard, trans. A. H. Mathew

--and the APERITIO ORIS rite (the mouth thing they keep talking about), but it's also a little about Ascanio's friction with the Vatican and the della Rovere-Ascanio rivalry

Politics and Dynasty: Underaged Cardinals in the Catholic Church, Jennifer Mara DeSilva

Popes, Cardinals and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, David Chambers

Ascanio Maria Sforza: la parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del Rinascimento, Marco Pellegrini

[originalartblog]

I have a REPUTATION among my friends and some acquaintances now and it’s only gonna spread from here… art curtesy of my friend who didn’t care for credit.

absolutely fantastic. your friends support you being romanced by a goose. look at him he's all dressed up he even brought a flower.

[laurapetrie]

"Why didn't Anne tell me about patriarchy? Which, to my understanding, is where men and horses run everything?”

[yellowocaballero]

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

[canisalbus]

I noticed you've been making more art of Machete and Vasco after they met again as adults - is this canon? Do they get to rekindle their friendship after all, or is it still brief and bittersweet? (I love your characters and art, btw!)

Thank you! I'm glad you like them!

It's canon, I believe. After their confusing and apprehensive friends-to-lovers involvement ended in their early 20's, their paths end up crossing again unexpectedly in their mid 30's and things gradually grow from there.

[fishbloc]

happy birthday!! alao thank you for worsening my desert duo brainrot i love all your artwork about them i can't wait for your desert duo storybook 🥹🥹🥹 my favourite has to be your artwork of the scene from 3rd life in the pond where scar allows grian to kill him. i love the vibes so much and scar's quote from that is one of my favourites from the entire life series

this is sososo sweet to read thank you 😭 the storybook is coming very very soon i promise !!! (the first prototype is gonna be printed next month hehe)

im actually very grateful a lot of people like that pond piece!!! because that artwork was entirely about the environment and not so much about grian and scar themselves, hence they're miniscule in it. there's the watcher symbol on the rock and the spectators hiding at the bottom of the piece and all that... i've put a lot of thought into it basically so it really does makes me happy to read people enjoy it :')

also because you've been so kind, here's a lil something i'll share from an animatic i've been working on and off for a long while as a side gig

[elminster-big-naturals]

this may be controversial but maybe the "astarion and halsin are SO sexually traumatised that you should literally cut your own dick off before thinking abt them romantically you disgusting freaks" goon squad should consider the ramifications of essentially insisting assault survivors be permanently excluded from any kind of sex and romance bc they are too broken and stupid to be trusted to know their own desires and boundaries or have the capacity to want to explore/push them.

you know real survivors (not pixel men but real ppl like me!) can read that shit? do you think pushing the lie that encountering one (1) Genital Wielded With Intent will invariably cause us to crumble to a miserably weepy heap of dust and blow away in the breeze is appreciated or helpful? or implying the people that love or desire us are selfish at best and outright predators at worst?

i'm begging ppl to just be 2% normal about abuse survivors PLEASE. the characters aren't real but the attitude you drag from fandom back into the real world are.

[illuteridae]

have i mentioned i’ve been making a webcomic

[hyperfixation-fix]

I swear to god, if Uncle Rick doesn't put his money where his mouth is and make our boy Leo a simping bi little twink like god intended soon I'll-

[heartstopperthoughts]

Nick Nelson meeting new people at uni:

[sasperine]

i love how the quote “your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing” is often cited as a sort of aphorism when in context it's just rodya hard projecting all his problems onto poor sonya. like please do not take any sort of advice from a man who unironically compares himself to napoleon. he is not qualified

[iris-drawing-stuff]

Here's a bunch of doodles for the Omori AU. I'm still working on the fanfic, but I'm not sure when I'll be finished.

[mariecchiato]

some screenshots from my sims's apartment!

[firefl1ezz]

i just. hit s+ rank in splatoon and i never honestly thought this would happen?? am i cool now.. do i get to be a part of the s4? do i get to be watered down to my running joke all the time?