the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

ICJ Ruling

Okay, let's get into this.

First of all, I get the frustration at the court not ordering a ceasefire. I was disappointed and frustrated at first too, since a ceasefire was the biggest and most important preliminary measure South Africa was requesting - and of course we just all want this horror to finally end for the people in Gaza. So I get the frustration and disappointment, I really do.

However, I do think this ruling is still a major win for South Africa, Palestine, and international law as a whole and here's why:

The court acknowledged that it has jurisdiction over this case and completely dismissed Israel's request to throw out the case as a whole. It will now determine at the merits stage (that will probably take years) whether Israel is actually commiting genocide.

The court acknowledged that Palestinians are a "distinct national or ethnic group and therefore deserving of protection under the genocide convention". Pull this out next time someone tells you "there's no such thing as Palestinians, they're all just Arabs".

The court acknowledged very unambiguously that "at least some" of Israel's actions being genocidal in nature is "plausible". South Africa has a case, officially. Israel is accused of genocide, in a way the ICJ deems "plausible", officially. This is huge. (And seriously, how freaking satisfying was it to hear all of those genocidal statements by Israeli politicians read out loud and used as justification for this rulling?)

The court might not have ordered a "ceasefire" in those words, but they did order Israel to "immediately end all genocidal acts" (which includes killing and injuring Palestinians) and submit proof that they actually did. How are they going to comply with this ruling without at least severly reducing or changing what they're doing in Gaza?

In fact, this wording might actually be more appropriate for a genocide (vs a war), as author and journalist Ali Abunimah notes on Twitter:

He's completely right. Israel lost today, by overwhelming majority (I mean, 15 to 2? I heard people predict the rulings would be very close, like 9 judges vs 8, but instead we got 15 to 2 (and even 16 to 1 on the humanitarian aid). Holy shit.) The court disimissed almost everything Israel's side of lawyers said, while acknowledging that South Africa's accusations are "plausible".

And this is important especially because of Mr Abunimah's second tweet there^. Because the question is, where do we go from here?

This ruling means that Israel is officially /possibly/ commiting genocide and that should have huge international consequences. The rest of the world now HAS to take these accusations seriously and stop arming and supporting Israel - and if they won't do it on their own, we, the people, have to make them. This is THE moment to rise up all around the world, especially in the countries most supportive of Israel (the US, the UK, Germany): Protest, call your representatives and demand a ceasefire and an end of arms deliveries to Israel.

We now have a legal case to back our demands: If Israel is, according to the ICJ, "plausibly" commiting genocide, then all of our governments are, according to the ICJ, "plausibly" guiltly of aiding in genocide. And we need to hold that over their heads and demand better. We need to do that right now and in huge numbers. Most politicians only care about themselves and saving their skin. We have to make them realize that they could be accused of aiding in genocide.

(As a German, I'm thinking of Germany here in particular: After South Africa's hearing, our government dismissed their case as having "no basis" - how are they going to keep saying that now that the ICJ officially thinks otherwise? Over the last months, people here have been arrested at protests for calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide. How are the police supposed to legally keep doing that now that the ICJ has officially deemed this accusation "plausible"? I used to be scared to use the word "genocide" at protests or write it on my protest signs - not anymore, have fun trying to arrest me for that when the ICJ literally has my back on this one 🖕🏻.)

So yeah - don't be defeatist about this, don't let Israel's narrative that they "won" (they didn't) take over. This might not be everything we wanted, but it's still a good result. Don't let what the court didn't say ("ceasefire"), distract you from the very important things that they did say. Let this be your motivation to get loud and active, especially if you live in any country that supports Israel. Put pressure on your governments to not be complicit in genocide, you now officially have the highest international court on your side.

Despite everything, it's still you.

HAPPY SPOOKY SEASON! Have some merch

recently received new stock photos for the Terrible Pink T-Shirts i sell on etsy, and i find them so funny for some reason...

look at the smiling attractive people wearing their (also smiling!) attractive fashion wear!

Chopper when he looses: 🐬🐬🐬

CROWLEY SSR THOUGHTS

there is zero basis for this, but I can't get this thought of my head

I don't know why I decided to draw it this way

Zelda having a secret room for when she "needs to concentrate" carries with it the implication that it's Link that makes it difficult to concentrate, since they pretty clearly lived together between BOTW and TOTK. A lesser zelink shipper would turn this into something romantic but I'm operating on a higher wavelength.

"Zelda Zelda Zelda look at this cool rock I found don't you think it looks like a frog? Hey Zelda do you think I could climb all the way to the ceiling without falling hey hey Zelda listen to this *makes horse noise* doesn't that sound just like Epona I'm really good at horse noises hey Zelda Zelda Ze-

a remake of "you've got mail" called "you've got kudos" about two fic writers who make flirty comments on each other's fics, only to realize that they already know each other because they used to be on opposite sides of a fandom war when they were teenagers under different usernames

The queen had always liked Feng Xin

bonus xianle trio silly under the cut:

While you were fighting in the war, I was falling in a pit.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as a binary i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as a sliding scale of "less" to "more" i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as the only two options i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as significantly different things i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as all encompassing i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as the two halves of a shallow concept of love that doesn't actually encompass anything at all i think we need to overhaul every popular conception about "types" of love so we can talk about things that are real and true for once

K2 for echorexfives? 👀

Rex would like a refund on his ARCs. Or a nap. Either is fine.

Just imagine for the second one that Rex is on an official holo call or something XD

Help me get back into sketching through some of these polyam/platonic pose prompts :3 (I'm still slowly doing these, they help powering through this little artistic crisis I'm suffering rn)

too many of you guys think nico is the loser and not lewis for letting the divorce go on for so long. like they're both losers about each other. emotionally constipated idiots who can't talk about their toxic homoerotic friendship that imploded on itself like 8 years ago and are now making it everyone else's problem. yeah nico's on television or in beer gardens talking about lewis all the time but like every other month some reporter is like "lewis, what's your favorite moment in your career?" and lewis no hesitation is like "oh man, karting, y'know? everything was simpler then" and then spends another six months skirting around nico's name. like this whole thing they're doing in the media isn't some kinda extended foreplay for them. they're both still pressing on the bruise to make sure it's still there!!! every few months, they're literally just asking on public television, does it still hurt for you like it does for me? and like clockwork, someone will release new information about them or one of them will say something about each other (in my heart, he's still my best friend/yes... and teammate) and the answer will remain the same, yes, of course, always.

even ignoring everything else wrong with lore olympus (which in itself feels impossible) there is just something really egregious and insulting at the way a "modern retelling" over an ancient greek myth just full-heartedly whitewashes the entire culture and mythos.

and it's not like rachel is the first to do it - greek myths and legends have been whitewashed for centuries, depictions of the gods have been categorically stripped of their ethnicity and origins long before rachel got a hold of them. it's the fact that rachel goes out of her way to insult the original myths whenever she can, that she emphasizes and pushes a western-centric mindset and viewpoint over and over and over and not only reinforces the whitewashing, but continues it down the line.

like, this is the first episode.

rachel goes out of her way to mock the original styles and wardrobes of the ancient greek world, and i get her attempt was to make persephone feel "out of place" with the more "modern" clothing that the other gods wear, but it really just does more to a) demonize demeter, who is almost always in traditional clothing, b) sexualize persephone.

go even broader with it, move away from the clothing itself, and rachel doesn't even bother to use any of the ancient traditions that are core to the myths. like for the love of god, she uses a christian wedding for persephone and hades!

greece is the birthplace of modern democracy and had a powerful judicial system, and rachel instead uses the modern / western iteration of court because ... why not

(completely unrelated but the inserts of everyone except eros and aphrodite come from the stupid zoom session zeus had back when he first charged persephone with treason, meaning we have proof yet again that rachel isn't drawing the characters into the scene, she's making pngs and sticking them into pre-arranged backgrounds downloaded from stock images)

and there are ten thousand more examples i could pull, because this is just the whole entire comic. you can look at a lot of modern adaptions and see where things have been modernized respectfully, and where they are done with disdain for the source material - no one is claiming percy jackson, for example, is perfect, but the author took a great deal of care in his research, and the love for the original myths and culture shine through. lore olympus has zero respect for the original stories, exemplified in how rachel demonizes demeter - the actual crux of the myth. it's bad writing and bad research and further attempts to whitewash a rich and storied culture that had people from so many walks of life, who existed in full spectrum of lgbt identity, who did not conform or even know of the world that exists today. you can modernize without erasing it, and rachel's refusal to do so is one of the many issues tacked to lore olympus.