#this isnt relevant to the post but

[gxlden-angels]

do you have any thoughts on the story of abraham and isaac? my parents talk about it and praise abraham for being willing to kill his son which..... scares me to say the least, and i'd love to hear your perspective as someone who seems more well-adjusted

Where I am now, it disgusts me more than anything. The interpretation of "I'm willing to sacrifice your life if I was told to" feels like the step before "I put you into this world and I can take you out of it." It's entitlement to a child, who is an independent individual, just because they are dependent on you for survival. I prefer the interpretation of understanding the actions you're taking and the reasons why (like how there's multiple religions that don't eat pork because it was so unsafe to eat at the time), especially if it's at someone else's expense.

Where I was in the thick of it all, it gave me morbid comfort that scares me now. I had fantasies of being a martyr for the church and the idea of being the next Isaac was just so appealing. Being a hand-selected sacrifice chosen by the Good Lord Himself? Sign me the fuck up, babey!

I think if I admitted that to my family, they'd be horrified.

It's another one of those stories or beliefs where I think the majority of christians just regurgitate what they've heard. It's a point of pride and devotion, but there's no personal reflection or cross-cultural awareness of it. Lean not unto your own understanding and whatnot. It's the potential that scares me the most, like the Quiverfull movement with the Duggars or Turpins. I'm sure there's stories now, but I can't remember them off the top of my head

(Also I will be telling my therapist someone on Tumblr called me "more well-adjusted" thank you anon)

[direfang]

hey update on YT folks; ublock has put out a guide to getting adblock to work on there again, which i only found out today bc YT failed to work with ublock running.

you can find their post >here<, i highly recommend following the link in the post to submit complaints to YT about violating a policy their parent company follows as well, as we'll be in a perpetual cycle of bullshit if we dont.

EDIT: 10/18

I'm turning off reblogs for this post as the info is outdated! Please refer to the post >>HERE<< for how to fix your ublock. Please note this is for firefox only, Chrome has already fucked over adblockers entirely.

[sporesgalaxy]

TWO THANGS

when I say "love" with no descriptors, I don't mean romantic by default

when I say "art" with no descriptors, I don't mean visual by default

[buggachat]

Sometimes I think about how Adrien, throughout the series, constantly grapples with his fear of abandonment. Gabriel conditioned him to believe that any love he receives is purely transactional, and that to earn affection he has to prove his utility. Adrien is constantly trying to prove his worth to his father for scraps of affection, and Chat Noir infamously crumbles on-screen any time he feels as though he is replaceable to Ladybug. It's a constant insecurity of his, like everyone will just dump him like a sack of potatoes the moment they find out how useless he is.

Meanwhile, all Marinette wants to is ensure that Adrien is happy. Because she loves him. She doesn't give two shits about how """useful""" he is. She holds him and tells him that she will never abandon him (both as Ladynoir and as Adrienette), and her fantasies are about saving him, not about him being "useful" to her. Throughout their relationship, Adrien is forced to disappoint Marinette constantly for reasons outside of his control (amok commands), and yet Marinette is still there for him.

At Adrien's lowest point, when he is forcibly torn away from everyone who had ever showed him genuine care, locked away in an all-white room and at his most "useless", right after disappointing Marinette and unable to even join the final battle or contribute in any way, she still saves him. She still loves him. Because he doesn't have to prove anything to her. Because he is loved and cherished for who he is, not for what he does, and that love is not conditional. Adrien's "happy ending" at the end of the first arc wasn't about him finally proving how useful he can be, because he never actually cared about being useful — he just saw it as the only means to feel loved and needed. Instead, in the end, he found out that he was loved and needed no matter what.

[archivebottles]

a bunch of oc stuff that ive been working on this past week

[felassan]

Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb notes that the next Mass Effect game (which it sounds from this is what the N7 Day 2023 teaser & previous ones pertain to) is a very long way off still [source]. he implies that he has a bit more to say on the topic on his show Game Mess Mornings today (Nov 8th). (here's a transcript of relevant quotes from the last time GMM discussed BioWare, ME and DA/DA:D, as an example).

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[obihoe]

i think its so crazy the way having power as a shinobi always seems to be such a double edged sword on naruto. like on one hand, u need it, its a tool for survival and it earns u respect from ur peers. but on the other .. it can also lead to the exact opposite. if u have too much power it can lead (or contribute) to isolation and becoming ostracized from ur community bc it makes people fearful of u .. this is applicable to madara i think and to naruto and gaara as well. madara isnt ostracized only bc of his power, it is also his lack of skill in forming bonds bc he has trust problems but his power is a major contributing factor. he is feared for his power (but also admired) and the more he gets isolated, the more he starts building his own identity around it as well and starts thinking its the only thing valuable abt himself. naruto as well is feared for his power as a jinchuuriki even tho he is also a bit of a special case since its only the grownups that know abt this so his peers ... they ostracize him for the opposite thing. he's a failure at the academy and a difficult learner so he gets no respect. it is only when he starts gaining more power (or controlling it better) and using it for the sake of the village that he gets everyone's respect and acknowledgement. he's a hero even all of a sudden. but gaara is an even more extreme case. gaara is also a jinchuuriki and he's ostracized for it to such an extent that he does not get to build bonds at all and in a bit similar fashion to madara starts self-identifying only over his power. both him and madara end up consumed by their power but while madara decides to use it for the sake of saving the world, gaara just fully decides to just live for himself, fight for himself and love only himself ... madara also becomes a bit self-absorbed but its not something he does purposefully i think. gaara just goes, well, everyone fears me and despises me anyway, so i might as well give them a reason. my only purpose in this world is to kill ... i have no other reason to live. i forgot where i was going with this but .. something something isolation, objectification and dehumanization from others on account of ur power and it leads to the person internalizing it and seeing themselves also as either below or above being human .. madara perceives himself to be above it, he develops a god complex and comes to think that he is the messiah who will solve the world's problems (with power) and gaara seems to perceive himself to be beneath it .. as a tool and a servant. both to his village and to the bloodthirsty voices he hears in his head.

[fullyfazed]

Goodnight dannypocalypse goodnight danno you were wonderful this year

[officialgleamstar]

i know this has been said a million times, but i do think some people need to learn that just because they find a character to be unlikeable, it doesnt make it problematic for other people to like the character. like its fine. people just like dirtbag characters sometimes. even if theyre villains or do problematic things. even if they arent redeemed. et cetera

[tmmyhug]

my god you think dream would have learned literally anything in the last four years

[hamsternamedmarinette]

I am doing language homework and came across a word I didn't recognize so I looked it up and the word was "miraculous" and I was once again forcibly reminded that I am an almost 25 year old adult with a fanblog for a children's cartoon. I'm not gonna stop but still

[jondrettegirls]

[ID: A comic of Enjolras and Grantaire from “Les Misérables.” Grantaire is saying, “And I’ll be nice to you, ever so nice.” He takes Enjolras’s hand, and continues, “Only you must be nice to me, too.” A short silence is marked as Enjolras breaks the hold. He asks, “Are you really—attracted by me?” End ID.]

“Very much indeed.”

[raytorosaurus]

this website is all for making fun of england for boring and pointless reasons until there's the most perfectly boring and pointless reason to laugh at them: that they are shit at cricket and even shitter at coping with being shit at cricket. the silence from americans when it matters is deafening

[itsatorchwoodthing]

every day i wake up and people are telling me basic facts on my favorite show (i run 3 accounts about it) that you know by just, watching it casually once, and tell me to “google it if i don’t believe it”

like, you’re twelve and i’ve watched this show so many times, and i’ve read the wikia cover to cover, i know

[quirinah]

intuition