#so... nuances are very important here

[artful-peculiarities]

I uh. Finished the first chapter draft for Ouroboros. Little sneak peaks below the cut I suppose.

“Deep down, you know that something has changed. You can’t quite put your finger on it yet.

-

That’s what it is. You’re alive.

-

Death does not always mean an end. It is simply a pit stop on a very long highway. You still have many miles to travel.

It is best if you get back in your car and begin to drive again.

-

How long can you take it? The way you have a mouth but no voice to speak through.

Can you take it?

-

You realize you are being rebuilt. It is uncomfortable and itchy knowledge. You feel it in the prickling numbness at the tips of your fingers, the eternal ache in your temples, and most of all, you fear.

Your aches and pains are all fear.

You are no longer human.”

[lucky-clover-gazette]

is it just me or do the labels “platonic” and “romantic” kinda fail to have meaning when applied aggressively to a fictional dynamic by people with vastly different definitions of those terms

[dearthshine]

.

[echo-s-land]

Someone told me that he 'like hanging around with me' and he 'love my smile' today

[taeraenomuyeppeo]

every time i come here i see takes that make my blood boil. there's absolutely no space for nuance on the internet and it's fucking with everyone's brains.

[turquoiseskye]

It’s funny how obsessed the internet is with hating gatekeeping when the internet is also full of assholes that I don’t want on my side of the gate.

[lizluzz]

My kid is very sensitive to injustice. Be it social injustice, or some specific unjust action directed toward himself or anyone else.

Now, standing up to injustice is an admirable quality. I definitely encouraged him in this. BUT, and this is an important distinction that I'm still working very hard on teaching him, the act of standing up against injustice does not automatically make you right, or helpful. This is not an easy lesson to teach, and one that I believe most adults, including myself, need to keep learning every day.

When you look at it from the standpoint of educating kids, it's almost obvious. These are things that seem reasonable to many people talking with children about those issues, since the conflicts usually involve other children:

It is important to understand the view point of the other child in the conflict. Or, when translated to adult conflicts: It is important to understand why the person doing something unjust is acting this way. You don't need to sympathize with them, nor agree with their justification, but often looking at it from their perspective will help you solve the matter in a more effective and peaceful way.

It is very admirable to stand up to unjust behavior even if it's direct toward someone else. But in this situation, it is important to check if the person/group you are standing up for even wants your help, and if they do, it is also important to understand what kind of help they want and need. Your personal views and tactics might be uncomfortable or even harmful to the people you're trying to help.

It is generally important to understand if your actions while standing up to injustice will do more good than harm. Even if your cause is right, you might act in a way that will only make it worse. Being right does not negate that. Being right is not always the most important factor.

And finally, of course, there is the need to always check yourself. Check your own actions constantly. Are you really standing up to injustice or just reacting to someone making you angry? What is the just thing in the situation you found yourself in? You should keep discussing things with people you trust, and keep educating yourself. Because it's so easy, for anyone, after deciding something is unjust, to dismiss any evidence to the contrary, or even see the nuance in anything relating to it.

Children are often very smart and preceptive, but this does not mean they understand nuance well. But if we won't keep teaching and repeating those lessons, they will grow up being adults who don't understand nuance, and this is a far bigger problem to tackle.

[hippo-pot]

also i do now think that the villain characterization is On

[ambrosiagourmet]

I want to talk about why I think this is the one of the most important Falin panels:

So, Falin is really nice, right? It's one of the first things we really learn about her. She's kind even to the monsters of the dungeon - choosing to ward the party rather than fight spirits and cause them needless harm.

In the above early flashback in chapter 11, we see Marcille fawning over Falin's kindness, calling her an angel. Namari calls her soft-hearted. We see Falin choose not to fight even when a zombie attacks - instead she resolves the confrontation with a hug. After the flashback, the first thing Senshi says is that Falin "sounds like quite the person," which Marcille strongly affirms.

At this point in the story, all we have seen of Falin are these impressions; she is a healer, an angel, a caretaker with an infinite well of kindness towards everyone she meets - both friend and foe.

And honestly, that remains most of what we have to go by to understand her. The only times we get to see Falin on the page, alive and just herself, are in the opening and closing pages of the story and in the brief period of time after she is resurrected.

Nonetheless, we do have some more details to work with. For one, there is the scene that The Panel is from - a short memory in chapter 75, when Marcille flashes back to while she's dying. In that scene, Falin prepares to teleport them all out, and says that she's sorry "if there is a person at [their] destination." And that's when we get The Panel.

If you teleport someone or something into another person, the person teleported into is likely to be, at minimum, severely injured. They could die.

We can see a lovely little horrifying example of exactly why in one of the Daydream Hour doodles:

So, hmm. That's not... that's not SUPER nice. Certainly not displaying the same "kindness to all, friend and foe included" we saw represented earlier. On a basic level, this adds some nuance to Falin's kindness. We see it break a little, when pushed to the limit. We see her chose to protect the people she loves above all else.

Which makes sense! As Laios says when the Winged Lion accuses him of similarly being motivated more by his friends' safety than everyone else in the dungeon, "...most people, aside from virtuous do-gooders, would feel the same way."

So, we can take The Panel as simply showing a moment of weakness for Falin. A time when she was pushed to her limits, and that "most people" selfish side of her shone through.

However... I think there's a little more going on with Falin than just her being an angel 99% of the time, except just that once. I love The Panel because I think it helps us understand that Falin isn't just motivated by kindness - she also has a desire to avoid seeing people in pain.

Isn't that the same thing?

No, no it very much is not.

Let's look at a short comic from the Falin section of the Adventurer's Bible, because I think it illustrates this point perfectly. The group is complaining about how much Marcille's healing hurts, and comparing it to Falin's, which "doesn't hurt a bit." Marcille retorts with the following:

Now, the punchline of this comic is that, despite Marcille's sentimental assertion that she's "thinking of [them]" by letting her healing magic hurt, they all still prefer to be healed by Falin.

But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that Dungeon Meshi hides a very real character beat or insight in a gag, so let's think about this somewhat seriously.

If Marcille is right (and she knows a fair bit about magic, so we can assume that she has at least somewhat of a point), then what Falin is doing isn't kind. I suppose if someone specifically requested to not feel the pain, it could be kind, but that's not really what happened here. She is the one who felt badly about the others being in pain, and she is the one who decided, without telling them or giving them a choice in the matter, to take away that pain.

Both Marcille and Falin are healing the party, but Marcille is doing it in a way that accomplishes the task in the most straight forward way, without any additional interference. Falin is going out of her way to perform the healing in a way she is more comfortable with. A way that avoids pain.

Going back the The Panel, I don't think its a coincidence that the only time we see Falin (well, non-chimera Falin) willing to do something that could hurt someone is when any potential pain will be far away from her. If she got someone hurt or killed by teleporting the party to the surface? Not only would it be far out of her sight, but she'd be dead before she had to deal with any consequences of that action.

Falin is not a confrontational person. She doesn't push when Marcille won't tell her the truth about the resurrection, and she comforts Laios about her own death - both of those things happening in the only full chapter she is alive and conscious in the whole story.

We also know that she considered accepting Shuro's proposal, despite not having any special feelings towards him, and that Falin never explained to Marcille that she wanted them to share a meal together. When she brought Marcille various foods at the academy, she just accepted Marcille's confused rejection and gave up.

And lastly, we know that she is still in contact with her parents, despite the neglect and abuse she suffered at their hands. Although the way someone chooses to handle contact with abusive or bad family is a complicated topic, which I don't want to overly simplify, I do I think this fact gets at the heart of how she handles conflict.

So many people that Falin loves have hurt her. There are understandable hurts, like Laios leaving the village, or Marcille not understanding the food. And there are bigger, far less justifiable hurts - like her parents neglecting her throughout her childhood, and sending her away to be alone at the magic academy.

It doesn't seem like Falin has ever confronted any of it directly.

And the unhealthy aspects of this kind of avoidance of pain and confrontation is one of the things that the story of Dungeon Meshi is all about. We see Laios grapple with it before he goes to kill Falin, and we see Marcille acknowledge it at the end of the story, when she tells Laios that she has come to terms with Falin's death:

Eating is a part of life. Consuming other living things is a part of life. It isn't really possible to avoid that pain - you can only hide from the truth of it. You have to be selfish everyday. You have to eat - to choose to live. To choose to take up space.

And this is something Falin embraces, too. She comes back to life, after all.

We see her choose to come back to life.

And how does she make that choice? She eats. She consumes, and then she is asked a question by the manifestation of hunger itself:

Do you want to eat more?

There is a double meaning in the Winged Lion's final words on the next page.

When I first read this, I took it as him saying: life is cruel. You will suffer. You will feel more pain.

But perhaps, especially for Falin, this also means: you are choosing a path where you must cause pain. Where you must consume. Where you must take, and must be selfish. Because eating is the special privilege of the living, and it is their burden, too. In order to stay alive, she will need to keep eating.

And she chooses that. Chooses to be selfish. It's why her resurrection scene is so important, and it's why The Panel is so important. Because Falin coming back isn't the ultimate reward for all of the party's hard work.

It's her choice. Just like it was her choice that started everything in the first place. But this time, she doesn't choose to accept causing pain for the sake of Marcille and Laios. She does it for her own sake.

[shiroselia]

Becoming more sapphic isn't a want it is a need

[stephobrien]

Is your pro-Palestine activism hurting innocent people? Here's how to avoid that.

Note: If you prefer plain text, you can read the plain text version here.

Over the last few days, I’ve had conversations with several Jewish people who told me how hurt and scared they are right now.

To my great regret, some of that pain came from a poorly-thought-out post of mine, which – while not ill-intentioned – WAS hurtful.

And a lot of it came from cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of people who claim to be advocating for Palestine, but are using the very real plight of innocent Palestinians to harm equally innocent Jewish people.

Y’all, we need to do better. (Yes, “we” definitely includes me; this is in no small part a “learn from my fail” post, and also a “making amends” post. Some of these are mistakes I’ve made in the past.)

So if you’re an advocate for Palestine who wants to make sure that your defense of one group of vulnerable people doesn’t harm another, here are some important things to do or keep in mind:

Ask yourself if you’re applying a standard to one group that you aren’t applying to another.

Would you want all white Americans or Canadians to be expelled from America or Canada?

Do you want all Jewish people to be expelled from Israel, as opposed to finding a way to live alongside Palestinian Arabs in peace?

If the answer to those two questions is different, ask yourself WHY.

Do you want to be held responsible for the actions of your nation’s army or government? No? Then don’t hold innocent Jewish people, or Israelis in general (whether Jewish or otherwise), responsible for the actions of the Israeli army and government.

On that subject, be wary of condemning all Israeli people for the actions of the IDF. Large-scale tactical decisions are made by the top brass. Service is compulsory, and very few can reasonably get out of service.

Blaming all Israelis for the military’s actions is like blaming all Vietnam vets for the horrors in Vietnam. They’re not calling the shots. They aren’t Nazis running concentration camps. They are carrying out military operations that SHOULD be criticized.

And do not compare them or ANY JEWISH PERSON to Nazis in general. It is Jewish cultural trauma and not outsiders’ to use against them.

Don’t infuse legitimate criticism with antisemitism.

By all means, spread the word about the crimes committed by the Israeli army and government, and the complicity of their allies. Criticize the people responsible for committing and enabling atrocities.

But if you imply that they’re committing those crimes because they’re Jewish, or because Jewish people have special privileges, then you’re straying into antisemitic territory.

Criticize the crime, not the group. If you believe that collective punishment is wrong, don’t do it yourself.

And do your best to use words that apply directly to the situation, rather than the historical terms for situations with similar features. For example, use “segregation,” “oppression,” or “subjugation,” not “Holocaust” or “Jim Crow.” These other historical events are not the cultural property of Jews OR Palestinians, but also have their own nuances and struggles and historical contexts.

Also, blaming other world events on Jewish people or making Jewish people associated with them (for instance, some people falsely blame Jewish people for the African slave trade) is a key feature of how antisemitism functions.

Please, by all means, be specific and detailed in your critiques. But keep them focused on the current political actors – not other peoples’ or nations’ political or cultural histories and traumas.

Be prepared to accept criticism.

You probably already know that society is infused with a wide array of bigotries, and that people growing up in that environment tend to absorb those beliefs without even realizing it. Antisemitism is no exception.

What that means is, there’s a very real chance that you will screw up, and get called out on it, as I so recently did.

If that happens, please be willing to learn and adapt. If you can educate yourself about the suffering and needs of Palestinians, you can do the same for Jewish people.

Understand that the people you hurt aren’t obligated to baby you. Give them room to be angry.

After I made a post that inadvertently hurt people, some were nice about it, and others weren’t. Some outright insulted my morals and intelligence.

And I had to accept that I’d earned that from them.

I’d hurt them, and they weren’t obligated to be more careful with my feelings than I had been with theirs.

They weren’t obligated to forgive me, trust me, or stop being mad at me right away.

I’ll admit, there were moments when I got defensive. I shouldn’t have. And I encourage you to try not to, if you screw up and hurt people.

I know that’s hard, but it’s important. Getting defensive only tells people you care more about doubling down on your mistake than you do about healing the hurt it caused.

Instead, acknowledge that they have a right to be angry, apologize for the way you hurt them, and try to make amends, while understanding that they don’t owe you trust or forgiveness.

Be aware that some antisemites are using legitimate complaints to “Trojan horse” antisemitism into leftist spaces.

This is a really easy stumbling block to trip over, because most people probably don’t look at every post a creator makes before sharing the one they’re looking at right now.

I recently shared a video that called out some of the Likud and IDF’s atrocities and hypocrisy, and that also noted that many Jewish people are wonderful members of their communities.

I was later informed that, while that video in particular seemed reasonable, the creator behind it is frequently antisemitic.

I deleted the post, and blocked the creator. I encourage you to do the same if it’s brought to your attention that you’ve been ‘Trojan horse’d.

EDIT: Important note about antisemitism in leftist spaces:

While it's true that some blatant antisemites are using seemingly reasonable posts to get their foot in the door of leftist spaces, it's also true that a lot of antisemitism already exists inside those spaces.

This antisemitism is often dressed up in progressive-sounding language, but nonetheless singles Jewish people and places out in ways that aren't applied equally to other groups, or that label Jewish people in ways that portray them as acceptable targets.

If you want to see some specific examples, so you can have a better idea of what to keep an eye out for, I suggest reading this excellent reblog of this post.

Fact-check your doubts about antisemitism.

Depending on which parts of the internet you look at, you’ve probably seen people accused of antisemitism because they complained about the Likud and/or IDF’s actions. So you might be primed to be wary, or feel unsure of how to tell what counts as real antisemitism.

But that doesn’t mean antisemitism isn’t a very real, widespread, and harmful problem. And it doesn’t mean many or even most Jewish people are lying to you or being overly sensitive.

So if someone says something is antisemitic, and you aren’t sure, I encourage you to:

A. Look up the action or thing in question, including its history. Is there an antisemitic history or connotation you aren’t aware of? For best results, include “antisemitic” in your search query, in quotes.

B. Understand that some things, while not inherently antisemitic, have been used by antisemites often enough that Jewish people are understandably wary of them. Schrodinger’s antisemitism, if you will.

C. Ask Jewish people WHO HAVE OFFERED TO HELP EDUCATE YOU. Emphasis on WHO HAVE OFFERED. Random Jewish people aren’t obligated to give you their time and emotional energy, or to educate you – especially on subjects that are scary or painful for them.

@edenfenixblogs has kindly offered her inbox to those who are genuinely trying to learn and do better, and I’ve found her to be very kind, patient, reasonable, and fair-minded.

Understand that this is URGENTLY NEEDED.

In one of my conversations with a Jewish person who’d called me out, they said this was the most productive conversation they’d had with a person with a Palestinian flag in their profile.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

I didn’t do anything special. All I did was listen, apologize for my mistakes, and learn.

Yes, it feels good to be acknowledged. But I feel like I’ve been praised for peeing IN the toilet, instead of beside it.

Apologizing, learning, and making amends after you hurt people shouldn’t be “the most reasonable thing I’ve heard from a person with a Palestinian flag pfp.”

It should be BASIC DECENCY.

And the fact that it’s apparently so uncommon should tell you how much unnecessary stress and fear Jewish people have been living with because of people who consider themselves defenders of human rights.

By all means, be angry at the Likud, the IDF, and the politicians, reporters, and specific media outlets who choose to enable and cover up for them.

But direct that anger toward the people who deserve it and are in a position to do something about it, not random people who simply happen to be Jewish, or who don’t want millions of people to be turned into refugees when less violent methods of achieving freedom and rights for Palestinians are available.

Stop peeing beside the toilet, people.

[skrunksthatwunk]

god im so mad at myself rn. i have multiple assignments and i SHOULD be doing them or sleeping or doing the Massive Neglected Amount Of College Stuff or making my mom's bday present (it's tomorrow, haven't started). you wanna know what i did instead? you wanna know what I've been sitting on the floor doing for the past hour and a half?

i (non-polish speaker but interested in the concept of being one) decided I'm gonna learn all the words to hej sokoły. yeah the folk song. this is not the first time this has happened with this song either. I'm so mad what the fuck is happening. i would still like to kiss whoever made the word skowroneczku on the mouth with tongue bc it's the best vocal stim but fuck off othwrwise you're ruining my LIFEEE

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Relistening to Checking Out, and I’ve always liked this scene in particular, as it is one that’s very open to interpretation.

I believe, from what I’ve seen personally at least, one or the most common interpretations is that Helen’s observation is either incorrect, or intentionally misleading, and that Jon’s response actually stems from touch aversion, or a degree of it, attributed to his trauma, particularly moments where he’s been left helpless and at the whims of others. E.g. Kidnapped by the Circus, almost killed by Daisy etc. And while I think this interpretation is both interesting and plausible, I don’t think I’ve seen much for the opposite interpretation, which is that Helen’s observation is correct.

It can be difficult to talk about Jon’s humanity sometimes, as there’s a lot of nuance and layers to cover. The fact is, Jon, especially in season five, does not completely think like a human. He is simultaneously a painfully human character such with deep compassion and guilt and self-loathing, while also being a being of immense knowledge who sees and understands the world in a different light, and in a way no one else can possibly comprehend, which has to be very isolating all things considered.

As with everything in TMA, Jon makes a choice, and his choice is to end the apocalypse, to stay with Martin, and to stay as human as he possibly can. We know from Annabelle that had she have taken Martin, who is presumably acting as one of his main anchors to humanity, Jon potentially would have snapped completely, the final push over the edge as she puts it. It has to be a difficult thing for him, to try and balance his existence when he is so fundamentally changed, and when this world naturally feels right to him, and you could argue that him snapping at the mother here is simply his instinct, being what he is.

He is The Archivist, the meant-to-be Pupil of the Eye, one of the most important beings present, and so it makes sense there’s almost an instinctive detachment from the victims. He is meant to Watch them, and Watching means no physical interaction. By touching him, the mother has broken this barrier, and so, instinctually, he reacts — with anger, notably.

I’d say it’s meant to contrast how we see him acting prior to the touch, where he seems genuinely sympathetic with the mother, and he is trying to help in what little way he can. Because before she touches him, that gap between Watched and Watcher is still firm in place, and so he can handle that.

Bearing in mind, I haven’t re-listened to the rest of season five with this, so I may have missed something.

I also think both interpretations can co-exist too, and that could be just as interesting to explore. Either way, I find that, with Jon, it’s important to consider his status in the Eyepocalypse and his nature vs his choices, although, his nature vs his choices goes for the whole series I think, as choice is such a consistent theme in TMA and in the Avatars.

[reachfolk]

the way people talk about children's media is so bizarre to me bc they judge adults who watch it by saying "it's for kids" and like buddy...... who do u think makes children's media? hint: it's not children

[swampjawn]

Character Acting > Action Sakuga (sometimes)

There's nothing like a sudden burst of 24-fps action sakuga insanery to convince people that the animation in a show is good,

but Dungeon Meshi Episode 23 shows that attention to detail in the subtler character acting moments can be just as, if not more important to telling a compelling story because while there is some great action animation too, the most crucial moment in the episode is a dwarf eating some soup:

This bit is done by the mysterious animator just credited as "Haruki," also known as Haruki Sakamoto, another relatively young talent like Ichigo Kanno, and in fact the two apparently studied together and collaborated on this project as students:

Haruki trained at Kyoto Animation and you can see the influence plainly in his style which, much unlike the flashy, snappy, grandiose style of his friend Ichigo Kanno, is characterized by very smooth motion and attention to realistic detail in nuances that might otherwise go overlooked.

Even starting from the anticipation (and here I mean that in the normal sense, not the technical animation sense) the attention to detail is on point from the incredibly consistent shapes of the spoon and bowl which each rotate toward and away from the camera, to the subtle rotation of his head not only when he actually lifts the spoon to his mouth, but also even earlier as he brings the bowl up to his face, to the little half blink as his expression goes from worry to determination, there's SO much nuance in the series of facial expressions

Senshi has generally been depicted as the most cartoony of the bunch; a stoic but goofy little teddy bear who's often silent and almost always has almost his entire face obscured, so it's all the more powerful to see his face with so much detail and expression in this cathartic, emotional moment that finally solidifies this group as his new family.

And there's more where that came from, you sick fuck. This post is an excerpt from this video where I broke down the whole episode, so go watch it!

[motziedapul]

SUPPORT A QUEER FILIPINO ANIMATED FILM! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇭

Do you wanna see more queer and trans animated films, especially from Filipino creators?

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@misteravid

Zsazsa Zaturnnah is a Filipino icon; a queer comic book superhero who's spawned many franchises, including TV shows, films, and even a musical.

The original comics are by the legendary Carlo Vergara!

A shy gay male*** salon worker named Ada finds a magic stone and eats it, transforming into the bombastic bodacious superwoman Zaturnnah.

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It's a comedic, action-packed, heartfelt film from the wonderful and talented Animators in the Philippines, who've been animating American cartoons for years, but rarely get to tell our own stories.

***This would take a longer discussion about queerness in the Philippines, but there's a lot of overlap between gay men, transwomen, and drag queens in the Philippines, under the term "bakla". Very often, this identity is attached to an expression of femininity by someone assigned male at birth. Because pronouns are not gendered in the Philippines, whether someone sees themselves as gay, trans, nonbinary, etc, is up to the person, even if they're all "bakla". Ada is, in international discussions, referred to as a gay man; but it's important to note he shows an adoration for his feminine body as Zsa zsa that may resonate with transfem readers. I'll continue to refer to Ada as "he" and Zsazsa as "she", but it's important to note that this is due to the gendered nature of discussing this in English, and culturally, there are nuances in the Philippines around the fluidity of gender as a result of our non-gendered pronouns. Thank you!

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