hope hope hope. hope is a practice we don't just live it we choose it. choosing it every damn day. living normal as usual during a genocide isn't natural. forced to survive. but seeing so much hope in practice in the lives of the Palestians I have met, in the words and embraces of my BIPOC peers, in the encampments at universities right now, in the de-arrests and locked arms of our comrades, in the Palestinians who fight to live every day. hope hope hope. hope is an action it is a practice it is a feeling and we must choose it every day.

Artea: So I- I used to be on 2b2t for quite a while, and then I stopped playing for a really long time, because I fell out of MC for a bit, so... [Laughs]

Artea: Yeah, I used to be on 2b2t, I've met- I've seen Fit on 2b2t before as well. And then was promptly killed, but you know what, that's fine. Yeah. I haven't even told Fit that story yet, so... Honestly, you guys are the first one to hear about that aside from like, one or two admins.

If you are curious about how the Day of the Dead is celebrated in Italy, read here!

You may find similarities with your own customs 💕💕

I hope everyone had a good Samhain yesterday! I didn't get to celebrate how I thought I would, but I had a wonderful time regardless! I went trick or treating with my brother and his girlfriend and had a wonderful time watching a play I had been search for earlier in the day. (That play being Venus in Fur, played by Hugh Dancy- my favorite actor- and Nina Adrianda!) Today, however, is Dia De Los Muertos! I couldn't make soup yesterday, so I will try my best to make it today for the stretched thinning of the veil across the holidays I celebrate- Samhain (Yesterday), Dia De Los Muertos (Today), and All Soul's Day (Today and tomorrow)! Even if I don't do anything, even if I don't make soup, simply resting, or doing work, or thinking of ideal devotional acts and/or festivities for these holidays- and any other ones you may celebrate- it was still a good holiday. You don't have to do anything for it to be a successful holiday. Holidays are meant to be times of comfort, times to be spent at the hearth, and even those brought to life with parades and communal gatherings, away from the hearth, still have the alternatives for those who cannot- or don't want to- leave their homes. For those who cannot participate in all the extravagant acts that come with the day- like trick or treating, or making soup, or even just getting a sugar skull, let alone setting an altar to the dead. Simply sleeping, restfully or not, or eating, or drinking, or laying down, or just waking up can be a perfect enough act of festive spirit for the holidays if you don't hold yourself to the high, picture-esc standard that is strewn about everywhere. Take your practice, and remember that you are at the center of it. Your practice does not exist without you, so make yourself comfortable in it, and make yourself loved within it. The holidays you celebrate in your practice are yours to celebrate, and while there are traditional ways of celebration, or popular, well known ones, that doesn't mean you have to do them. Take care of yourself, and have a wonderful Celtic New Year. May your ancestors bless and guide you through the thinned veil. Blessed be <3

Me, thinking about how I can make this about Forever: Forever finally, finally got back from the Nether after weeks, and all he got was one day before he was sucked into Purgatory

Feliz día de muertos feat Mahiru.

The Day of the Dead (Spanish: el Día de Muertos) is a holiday traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2. [...] It is widely observed in Mexico, where it largely developed [...] The multi-day holiday involves family and friends gathering to pay respects and to remember friends and family members who have died. Source: Wikipedia

We also put up altars with food, candy, flowers, fruits, and pictures and toys of our loved ones who passed on. It's a really beautiful holiday to remember those who are gone.

I don't really have a hc for anyone in milgram, but I really wanted to draw someone as a Catrina and thought Mahiru would best fit her!

Here is an old drawing I made of how an Altar de Día de Muertos looks like

I made myself cry the other day while printing a linoleum carving I did for Dia de Muertos. It’s the biggest one I’ve made so far and it features two skeletons having a beer together sitting on the street.

I’ve had that idea rolling around my head for some years now, of a skeleton drinking beer by the street. And when I decided I wanted to carve it out, I thought they’d be lonely so I gave them a friend.

The piece is called “Compadres” I’m not sure how to translate it, it’s like friends, really good friends, friends you can count on for anything.

And there I was, arm sore from printing 30 and so pieces (I don’t have a press, I used a spoon) and I’ve been staring at these two for most of the day. Inking them up, placing the paper, and when I turned the paper they looked so… chill.

Like, these are really good friend skeletons I’m printing out. And they got me thinking about how nice it is to have a relationship like them.

To have someone you can be comfortable with, enough that you can have a great time drinking beer on the street, and it’s the best time ever because you’re with them.

And then you take that, and you go “yeah, and even after death, when our flesh is gone and our bones are all that’s left, I’d still wanna hang out with them. And they’d still wanna hang out with me”

Something about that just hit me right in the heart. And I started crying, thinking of everlasting bonds, of friendships so comfortable that you’d seek them out after dying. People that truly are home.

I think people have said this before and also way better than I could ever articulate but. Cellbit!! His love and devotion to the people he loves. To the people he considers family. How sweet and gentle he is with the eggs, how attentive whether he is babysitting or just spending time with them. How much he cares for the people he considers dear to him, even if they hold different values or don't trust him the same way (jaiden, foolish, maxo...)

It makes me absolutely convinced that it will be SO HARD to just "snap him out" of his current state. (This got longer than I expected i'll put it under the little read more thing)

He isn't consumed by madness on his killing spree, he is consumed by grief, violence and death that has haunted his whole life. From the age of 13 he had to kill to survive, live or earn the respect of people around him. When he arrived at the island he tried investigating, interrogating, manipulating, infiltrating, hiding, scheaming, thinking, sneaking and attacking his way into the federation or anything that could get them close to figuring out how to leave the island. He betrayed his most trusted friends to free his best friend and gather information, he hid from everyone that his son was being threatened with death in order not to put him at risk and all he got from it was more trauma, more manipulation, more loss and stress and fatigue. He IS tired. And he is tired bc he cares. He cares about the ppl stuck in the island with him, he cares about the eggs who were killed or hurt by the codes and he despises that the federation held bobby's death over roier and jaiden's heads. He despises an organization that left an egg (hope) to die, alone and abandoned, who had nothing to them but a notebook where they wrote about wanting to be loved and not be forgotten. How could he have in him any simpathy left for anyone working for such a thing? Someone like him, that has only known violence and the urge to kill, maim and eat his enemies? Someone like him that found out, in the island, months after losing his child, that he could've had a family but was cast away. For a reason he doesn't know, bc they are once again hiding it from him. He could've had a sister, parents and good memories of a (relatively) normal childhood, when he played at being a captain and stole candy to eat and had a worm for a pet. They erased that from him and stopped searching when it was too much of a hassle. And he left a note, as a child, to not trust any of the workers. So how could he trust them?

He is lost. Bagi and bbh are scared he will lose himself but to him, he knows he has been far gone for a while now. All he wants is to hurt the federation and to kill cucurucho. He wants to strike them, he wants them to FEEL it, like he did, the desperation, the fear, the loneliness, the hopelessness and helplessness of it all. And he wants his family to be safe. They are not at risk by his hands. He doesn't want to eat pac, he doesn't want to hurt the eggs, he doesn't want to fight or go behind their backs. He wants to protect them from the thing that took everything from him, including the ability to feel more than the instinct to kill. He is tired. He loves so much. And he is tired of seeing the people he loves being hurt. He is tired of looking into his husband's eyes and seeing emptiness, the loss and the grief all consuming, knowing the federation could've not given them the hope. Could've let them go. Could've explained things to them. Could've been honest about the whearabouts, as little as they know, and the attempts to search for the eggs. But they didn't. And they won't. Cucurucho said so himself: they could have truce, but cellbit WILL pay. He doesn't care. He loves everyone else around him way too much to care about himself. His life in the island is good, he had peace for a while, he met the love of his life, he met his kid(s) and his other new best friend (who was also put into the nether by the federation, of course), and all the friends he made along the way. His promise and talk with slime yesterday showed that: he wants to protect the eggs and anyone that could hurt them.

I guess what I am saying is... it'll be hard to just put him in a room and convince him that he is loved or that the workers have family like him, bc... that's not why he is killing them at all. I understand the desperation in bagi, the sadness in bbh and the fear in pac, but none of that feels like it will be enough bc he is convinced, not after snapping or going insane, but after months and a whole life of horrific torture and trauma and loss that this is the only way to help the people he loves.

So yeah, fucking cellbit. He loves so much it hurts. He is so tired of everything. And he is so violent.

me watching horror and creepypasta stuff as if im not going to get spooked at night

started a new job recently as a research assistant for a gay Latinx professor in my grad program, and while I definitely don't have the time to be doing my own research, working with this professor on his book projects has been so affirming and healing. i'm working on a book he hopes to publish soon that is full of interviews of gay and trans Latine men...and it is so fucking awesome. I feel so seen by the words I am reading, and I feel tears spring to my eyes looking at the photographs of these men. They look like family members, distant cousins, and family friends. They look so happy and full of confidence. I see myself in their eyes, recognizing the "fish" shape in our eyes that is so distinctly tied to Latines. One of the men in the book is a pup! And it is so beautiful seeing his smile as he holds his pup mask.

I have met very few queer latines. I don't know what it's like to have the tio or tia that has some secret aura to them, that "no se habla" vibes where everyone knows they're queer but just won't acknowledge it. Hell, this professor I'm working with is the first gay Latine man I've ever spoken to. I wish I had a community of gay Latines. I hope I am able to access that one day :)

There are a lot of things I want to clip but I'd like to spend time editing things down and adding both POVs to some of them, so I'll do that after the event!

Trick or Treat! -@antimony-medusa

This is my dog Blade (Named after Technoblade, yes<3) and he was my best friend. He recently came to visit us from the afterlife and played with his siblings at home, had his favorite meal and made us company for a day. Let me tell you about día de los muertos or day of the death.

TLDR: One of many versions of the myth of day of the death, what it often means and why it's cool.

ALSO! I'm (unfortunately) not a historian. I just got mexica/aztec history, mythology and cosmovision as special interests of mine since my senior year or highschool so most of my knowledge is for classes, asking my teachers, studying for exams and researching on my own. There's a lot of myths and legends about this beautiful tradition and this is just the one I know, so if you're interested, please feel free to be curious and do the same!

Back when the Aztecs were the biggest empire in America, whenever a person died by natural causes, it was said their souls were going to travel to the Mictlán (Nahuatl for place of the death), which is similar to hell but not as such as Hell, since Mictlán is the death new home, rather than a punishment. And it too has 9 different levels with 9 different tests by the god mictlantecuhtli and his wife mictecacíhuatl (god and goddess of the place of the death, respectively) for the souls to reach eternal rest.

(This is the place where most people would go, but there's, if I remember correctly, around 3, maybe 4 afterlife places souls would go, but that's a ramble for another time.)

The very entrance of the Mictlán is a river that souls need to cross in order to get in. Here, xoloitzcuintles (xolotl means monster/weird thing and itzcuintle means dog, so literally translating it means weird dog or dog monster. As a fun fact, axolotl literally translates to water monster since it has -xolotl) would help them to get across, but only and ONLY IF souls, when alive, were kind to animals. Thus Aztecas having xoloitzcuintles as lower deities.

But the 9 trials were tough, and mictlantecuhtli didn't know what to do to motivate souls to get through all of them. So then he allowed for them to go back to the world two days a year. November 1st is the day for the children to go visit their parents and siblings. November 2nd is the adult's turn to go visit their families. Aztecs were pleased by this and started making their favorite dishes to help them recharge<3

Apparently, it was the people around 2019 who decided that it was pets' turn to come and visit us October 27th, and we all embraced it. A lot of people's first experience with grief was with pets, and I think they deserve the same treatment. Like with humans, a candle is lit to light their way home along with cempasuchil flowers to trace their path. They're all welcomed with their favorite meals, water, and in some cases toys or their favorite things when they were alive.

As a kid I never had a reason to celebrate día de muertos, but now I do. And rather than that being sad, I took the opportunities to reflect about life, death, afterlife and memories. As long as we remember them, they won't ever die. They'll always live with us, in our hearts and the happy memories we shared with them. Grief is the price to pay for loving in life, and I think every second of pain I've ever experienced, was worth the smiles my loved ones drew in my face when they could.

I encourage anyone of any nationality who feels curiosity to research and put together an ofrenda, share memories about your loved ones and remember how happy you were. Tysm for reading<3

interesting but also confusing to me that Conchata, Miguel and Gabriel all apparently still have/go by the O'Hara name even after the divorce, unless it's still about Conchata feeling ashamed about the fact she originally came from Downtown and not wanting any connection to who she was prior to leaving it, even it means being nominally tied to a terrible marriage??

I will answer "trick or treat" asks if I get them but I won't send any

I will, instead, ask for my calaverita on Día de Muertos

Kirsten McDuffie my wife I miss you so much WAAAHHHH