hi frank, i just had a really scary nightmare. can you cheer me up?

Sure! Here's a list of the very few things I know for sure to be true (this is just off the top of my head):

You can always get a great burger at Joe's, on the corner of 34th and 8th in Manhattan.

You can never be too cool to go to elementary school.

Police officers do not have the option of giving you a ticket for murder.

Within the next few years, you can probably buy a large cup of blueberry-flavored yogurt.

Somebody out there is grinding TV spinoffs into a fine powder for free distribution, which may be the very best thing that has ever happened to humanity.

For the same reason, somebody will someday have to make a porn parody of "Sesame Street," and this will probably be the best thing that has ever happened to humanity as well.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was right. When we finish ridding the universe of "In a galaxy far, far away" puns, "An entire universe of creatures kiss" will follow.

Instead of those obnoxious songs that we've all been called, we are in fact more like one big family with an infinite number of cousins separated by only a handful of years, all of whom have interesting things to say.

In the next few years, we will discover a way to stretch jokes further than they were intended to be stretched, and turn a few old running gags into a good dozen.

I'm sure I could come up with more if I only thought about it a little longer.

Hello, I am a very shy mutual. I want you to know I had a dream where you were using a stone goddess(?) figurine in some sort of ritual, and when I asked you to show me more, you advised me against that ritual and suggested I use a hag/holey stone to achieve success in my goals. It was strange to me because you and I don’t normally communicate, but I think it’s neat when people tell me when they dream of me, so hopefully you feel the same!

Oooh that is so cool! I also find it neat when people tell me I've been in their dreams (particularly when it's things like this), so thanks for telling me! <3

Busy night in my brain last night, coming up with dream ideas that I have no way to actually complete... but interesting enough still on waking that I want to make a note of. :)

(behind a cut because, well, other people's dreams...)

So the setting was supposed to be a historical medieval European town, in a Jewish ghetto. There was a young couple in love, engaged to be married, but the young man's work took him outside the ghetto so he could earn enough money to support the two of them, and one night on his way home, a combination of accidental circumstance and boiling-over racism lead to him killed at the beginning of a pogrom that burned most of the Jewish quarter to the ground - very tragic romance sort of thing. In the future, a company with quantum time-travel technology saw this, and decided that it would make a perfect subject for their next big movie Oscar-bait project -- they would send back a bunch of microscopic cameras, plant a few attractive, camera-friendly agents to nudge things to even further cinematic heights, and then when the course of events was the perfect blend of beautiful tragedy, this would snap into being historical reality, they would capture it all on film, and win all sorts of awards, make a lot of money, that sort of thing...

I was (in the dream) going to be the young man's 'best friend,' to make sure he got into the right sort of screen-friendly trouble to garner sympathy from a modern audience - but secretly I was hoping to nudge events so that the couple (who were my friends) could both survive and escape together in the end, and maybe minimize other deaths along the way. There was also a central antagonist provided by the studio, a handsome blond man to provide a sneering menace and focus for the camera - who had signed up for this because he 'secretly' just liked to kill people, beautiful heroine included, and as many others as he could get to along the way. And then there was a secret agent, who turned out to be an older me from another timeline, that wanted to spoil the entire movie plot, prevent the tragedy from happening in the first place, and if I was going to have to kill some racist assholes in the past to do it, it was still better than the hundreds of deaths that were going to accompany any other version.

There was going to be a whole timeline of overlapping, repeating events, as any of us could rewind time if things got too far off the course we wanted, but we didn't have access to the camera footage (for 'naturalistic' purposes) so we'd only know what we actually could find out about, and plots and plans and counter-plans, as we all tried to make our own version and prevent the others from stopping it - but we couldn't be too overt about it, because the people working the cameras would just rewind it if it didn't appear to fit the 'historical plot' - it all had to just come together, and in a way that would make a great story for the audience.

Anyway, fun complicated idea - I have no capacity to actually produce it, so there's probably a good reason the dream didn't go much beyond actually laying out all the premise for me. Setting aside the complexity of the repeating timeline and conveying everyone's plots, I don't know enough actual Jewish history to make up a good fake one, let alone a good fake that could then be presented as another version for a modern media audience... Also there's the thing where the obvious 'good' ending would be for the whole movie to get spoiled, but I don't know what would make it not have the problem of 'but this doesn't address the actual long-standing racial tension;' maybe it's enough to present it as a good thing that time-traveling movie executives can't exploit this specific tragedy, and that the problems of racism and hate don't lend themselves to cinematic solutions -- but also I want my dreams to have a good story! :)

You know you're tired when you sleep in until almost noon and when you wake up it's from a dream in which you're visiting a historical bed museum that has reconstructions of all the different beds that you can try out so you have a nice lie-in in a fancy reconstructed medieval featherbed

dream from several days ago

Lokius in Loki 2x01 - "Ouroboros"

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

Kind of had a small what if thought during the Silver dying arc-

What if Shattered saw what had happened, decided to go back.. come back and try to change fate again for Silver, but offering a sort of solution.

Silver would die, only for a ‘bullet’ to rise from the ashes. Ash still believing that Silver is gone-

Motives are unclear but perhaps he just wanted to see something different this time?

Silver belongs to @itsxroxannex

Morning serenity

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in other words AAAAAAAAAA *rips off my hair* i'm jumping!!! them!!! (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡ This one is special because it's based of my first fanart from one year ago(link) yay!! wich I still find hilarious

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage - Main Road

Oh so this is how it happened!

THE OWL HOUSE FINALE SPOILERS!!

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OWL HOUSE FANDOM OUR PRAYERS (more like cursing and yelling) HAVE BEEN HEARD!!

THE BITCH IS DEAD!!

FINALLY!!

If I remember correctly you created Machete around 2007-2008. But when did you create Vasco? (I'm sorry of this has been asked before, I couldn't find anything)

First finished pictures of Vasco are from 2018, but even before that I had been thinking it would be interesting if Machete had had one (1) romantic relationship in his youth before he was ordained. I just didn't have a name and design for him yet.

In the earliest sketches of Vasco, he first looked a little bit like a bordercollie, then like a spaniel or a setter. He had a darker color palette as well, sort of chestnut brown with white markings, but combined with the overpowering whiteness of Machete he looked kind of impassionate and drab, so I kept making him warmer and lighter until he became the golden boy he is today. The name came later, I just thought Vasco sounded friendly and charismatic. (Also the old finnish word 'vaski' means brass and bronze, and even if it's a tedious connection and doesn't factor into their canon at all, it felt too fitting to me personally and I had to go with it).

So I made an observation today

it was literally their moment and they just let us watch

(if you need me i'll be marinating in this for the foreseeable future)

Remember how they pointed out that Palistrom wood was becoming rarer? Because Belos kept over harvesting it and not giving it time to grow back?

The University’s tree is blue. Its a big ass Palistrom tree