wearemercs - Tumblr blog

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D&D OC female elf rogue/thief by KelvinHiu

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I'm going to school! by sungmoomoo

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The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees. The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.” While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

[...]

Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians. In January, The Intercept published an analysis of New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times coverage of the war from October 7 through November 24 — a period mostly before the new Times guidance was issued. The Intercept analysis showed that the major newspapers reserved terms like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” almost exclusively for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, rather than for Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli attacks. The analysis found that, as of November 24, the New York Times had described Israeli deaths as a “massacre” on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of “slaughter” was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians killed climbed to around 15,000.

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Militia by Fangdan Runiu

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Dragon hunter by Veselin Ivanov

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by DmitryDeceiver

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i love the extras of dungeon meshi in how it fleshes out the world because they make it so much more evident how race affects every part of the story while avoiding the zootopia racism problem. like obv a main theme of the story is like, humanity and desire, 'to eat is to live', etc, but since the majority of it takes place in the dungeon isolated from society and thru the lens of laios, the racial aspects play out more like shadows on a wall for most of the story.

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

tldr dungeon meshi worldbuilding is so good

[wearemercs]

Reused some drawings to apply small updates to Charlotte's armor! I like this one better 😀✨

I think the darker armor contrasting with her cheery and bubbly personality is more interesting. I also added some gold accents because I think it fits her being a 1st class knight.

THIS IS THE FINAL VERSION. (Unless I change my mind in the future 😆)

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Some more Charlotte!

Neither her clumsiness nor her disgust and hate for monsters will stop her from going on adventures.

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Charlotte vs any type of monster

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Charlotte, a cheerful and clumsy knight

Even though she gets panicky when dealing with monsters, she managed to become a 1st class knight in her Monster Extermination Guild.

Will draw more stuff to showcase her personality! And I still need to create the other members of her party. 😤

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Let's go crush some Skaven ratheads by NNNmengmeng

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dadchuck is everything to me

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i am still doing dono commissions for palestine! 🇵🇸 buy an e-sim or donate to a palestinian relief cause and get a drawing for it! this week i'm gonna finish outstanding ones and get started on the waitlist. also it's food commissions, but i'm thinking if you want a little doodle of a horror character or something i can do that if you're fine with something a little less polished

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I don’t have a lot of words right now but Steven Attewell, who you all reading this probably know as @racefortheironthrone , just passed away. He was a very great writer, friend, and person, and it’s a horrible loss.

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RIP. Taken too soon.

Fuck @racefortheironthrone died? https://twitter.com/DavidAttewell6/status/1778458517428433180