I found these guys in Jelenia Góra and honestly - I feel they need to become a reaction meme!

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Man sometimes I think about Dora and like yeah she's a fictional person and not real but Jesus christ imagine dating a guy and he's literally the worst like just absolutely terrible and he doesn't let you be A Real Person and you finally leave and he makes you into a cudgel to beat himself with in his horrible brain and then ALSO YOU GET USED AS A METAPHOR FOR THE VIOLENCE OF LIBERALISM IN A VIDEO GAME ABOUT HIM ????? AND THE NARRATIVE CONTINUES TO NOT LET YOU BE A REAL PERSON EVER

WERE THERE NO GRAVES IN EGYPT

There's a weirdly poignant sort of... metaphysical tragedy in the fact that pain, which evolved as a helpful signal to alert us when bad things might be happening to us, grew into becoming... well, basically the Bad Thing. To the point where by universal consensus the very worst thing you can do to a being like us is torture them (i.e. trigger the warning signal as strongly as possible while perhaps deliberately avoiding causing "actual" harm). And there are tons of illnesses and injuries and disabilities that massively impact people's quality of life, ranging from annoying to depressing to driving people to suicide, basically purely because they're very physically painful, while the underlying bodily dysfunction that the pain is supposedly "warning" of is either relatively minor or literally non-existent.

The capacity to feel pain is a good and important thing, some people lack it and that's generally awful for them, only in a universe unrecognizably different from ours could we ever do without it. But isn't it awful to think how if only there was somebody up there to adjust the settings for us, they'd probably only have to tweak them the tiniest bit to keep 99.99% of the benefits while saving us from all the most extreme miseries forever?

The mechanism didn't have to be perfect for natural selection's purposes, it had to be good enough that the average individual in the average situation would be motivated to stay more or less out of trouble. Measured by the metrics nature was working towards, she could afford to be a little slapdash with the exact implementation, and she was. In doing so she opened the door to infinities of evil and suffering that wouldn't otherwise be conceivable. All this only had one chance to happen, and it happened that way. There's nobody to be mad at--I'm mad about it, though.

[I'm sorry for your loss.] It was a long time ago. The wounds don't heal, but they become more bearable.

no but essek's abnormal behaviours in the last arc and especially in episode 140 are my roman empire. which is ironic because aeor is something of a roman empire itself. but in all seriousness, it was the episode that made me realise i love essek and his development so much and it kinda summarised it even before caleb's epilogue.

and i mean the "it's not fair" scene specifically. it's like, an epitome of his whole character progression from a person who put An Objectively Important Goal above all else without hesitation to someone who can't help but care for people around even more than his goal, no matter how big and relevant it is.

the mighty nein - and he alongside them - pretty much saved the world and freed an ancient city from thousand-year-long suffering. they defeated nine extremely powerful menacing entities who managed to stay out of everyone's sight for years and were so close to achieving their goal and dooming exandria in the process. they did the impossible and became heroes and somehow, they survived, even though they had bidden farewells a couple of hours ago because they had already understood what they had been facing. and nevertheless. they made it.

and none of them was celebrating.

mighty nein are basically essek's only friends. he knew them to be very unusual people, to put it lightly, loud and stubborn and completely inescapable once they consider you to be one of their own. and they showed him so much kindness and put so much faith in him, they were here playing the most atrocious music ever and digging clay in his backyard for a spell they invented just to help one of theirs and asking him if he could bring them pastries the day after they found out he was lying to them and had started a war. they were chaotic and weird and sometimes unbearable but most importantly they were carrying so much hope with them all this time - a hope they could end the war, a hope they could stop the angel of irons cult, a hope they could get better, a hope he could get better, and now, finally, that they could save their lost friend.

and that hope shattered, just like that, the moments after they'd already made the impossible. they saved so many souls - and then could not get back just that one.

for essek "my intentions were never good they were important" thelyss it just. shouldn't have mattered. they won. it could have been worse. people die and when they die they rarely come back. they should've been happy everyone else barely made it alive.

but for some reason, mighty nein being so defeated after they saved the world exposed him to that overwhelming feeling of injustice and unfairness. and i mean, there were many things essek considered to be unfair, but when i watched his first appearance and his interactions with mighty nein later on til their reunion in aeor arc, i wouldn't dare to guess that one of the things on that list would be something that personal. and personal not even to him.

the thing is, essek didn't even know who that guy was. why mighty nein cared about him so much. he had an idea, i guess, that he was their friend once, or someone in that body was. it was also a person who wanted to unleash a terrifying horrific aberration onto the material plane. it was a person very dedicated to killing essek and his friends - and they still didn't take any pleasure in fighting him. essek didn't feel strongly about lucien or molly, because he never knew them.

i don't think he mourned his death and failed resurrection. he mourned mighty nein's hope, the one they put in him when they had no reason to, the one they offered yasha in the cathedral and the one they kept after the spell for veth failed and the one they carried til the very end because they wanted it to reach molly. they had saved people with this hope. they had saved nations. they had saved the world. but they ended up feeling like it hadn't even been worth anything.

how desperate would it feel, witnessing people who for some reason always saw good in you when they absolutely shouldn't, who made literal miracles out of nothing, who ended wars and fought gods and tricked the hags and freed cities from horrors beyond anyone's comprehension purely because they thought it was the right thing to do and also loved their friends this much, silently crying over a dead body they couldn't bring back to life? how desperate would it feel to realise that with all your knowledge about time you dedicated your life to and threw away any principles for, you can't undo this? no one can. some things are left to fate alone and this time it wasn't kind to them. no matter how much good they did, they still got slapped in the face.

and it was, i think, such a genuine moment of empathy. like, essek is the character who prefers to put up a facade and act distant and self-composed but this time he just. walked away unable to watch this. the could only say to fjord that it wasn't fair. even when he was caught off guard in nicodranas he was able to explain himself and his motives to an extent even though he was a nervous wreck whose extra important plan went to hell the second the only people he cared about appeared. this time he had nothing to elaborate on. it just wasn't fair. it wasn't fair his friends didn't get what they wanted the most. it wasn't fair he couldn't do anything to make it right.

it is such a sad and beautiful and even cathartic scene because it is about person who started a war that destroyed so many lives - and then met this ragtag group of weirdos who saw a lonely stand-offish guy and said "hey, let's be friends!" and didn't even wait for him to answer. he saw them being serious and calculated and he saw them being ridiculous and extremely stupid, he saw their mistrust to outsiders and their loyalty to each other, he made spells with them and paid a visit to their hot tub, he ate their stale pastries and drank their hot chocolate mixed with whiskey, he was welcomed amongst them and in their wonderful home, both in xhorhas before they even found out what he had done and in the tower when they already knew - and then, he saw them mourning their loss, defeated and helpless, and he, a person who believed there were things more important than whole nations, let alone just one life, couldn't help but share the pain they felt. a pure display of compassion from someone who detached himself from it, who didn't believe he could grow into a better person capable of it again, but became one nonetheless without even realising it

babes my experience is not universal and blah blah blah but when i bring up how much pain i’m in by using positivity and humour, that is not the time to respond with sympathy and sads. like if i’m joking about it i’m either not ready to be upset about it or i’ve already done being upset about it, you being upset about it for me is just pushing me into that space unnecessarily and kinda makes me feel like i’m not allowed to like? talk? about my day? unless i’m catering to your emotions in the first place.

also, like, just match my energy, the conversation is gonna be way funnier if we’re both joking about it cuz let’s be real bodies are already engineered terribly and there’s something hilarious about mine not even meeting that subpar standard

I haven’t been able to let my anger out on a pup in a long time and i’m itching for it. Tying them down with their legs spread, carving bites and cuts into them to drag out the muffled cries and begs to slow down. Laugh at how much they’ve cum from calling them such sinful names while defiling their body, taunting and giving faux sympathy about how easy it is to break and abuse them when they’re cockdrunk like this.

Not stopping until they’re sobbing and barely conscious from what seems like endless torment, just to pick them up and shower them with kisses and praise for being such a good punching bag for me.

as much as I love osteoarchaeology, I’m not sure I could do it. I’d just be standing there looking at a badly healed break on a femur from the Paleolithic era thinking “ow. owwwww. yeowch. ouchie.”

i am on yet another “if you’re going to like characters who are assholes, at least be honest that they’re an asshole” kick. stand by

Jesus Christ. I've never read Yellowfang's Secret and it's insane to me that what we see of Lizard is supposed to be "evil woman" like from the screenshots you posted this is really and truly someone who is being forced to bear children. Forced to care for them. Lashing out that her husband can keep doing his job and she has to drop everything to care for children she didn't want. And that horrible shit from Ragged oh my God dude.

It's SO fucked up!! That exchange with Hollyflower is HORRIFYING!!!

Like, during the Brokenkit Handoff, she's shouting about not wanting to raise every unwanted kit and how badly she hates this, only for Raggedstar to start bellowing at her to shut her mouth. He's able to "convince" her based on on "ambition" they slapped onto the character in that moment, but when you really step back and look at the context, it just reads like she realizes she has no fucking choice

She's the only queen in the nursery. There was no "saying no"

Especially not to the deputy

NO ONE cares about Lizardstripe as a person, even though she's obviously really uncomfortable about being forced to birth and raise children

"I know she doesn't want this. That's too fucking bad. It's her duty as a woman" -Sagewhisker

I can't get over it. This book doesn't treat her like a person, it treats her like a bad vessel. She's a horrible mother because she DOESN'T WANT THIS, and the narrative condemns her, even partially blames her for A BABY-KILLING TYRANT, because she wasn't happy about the situation she was forced into.

Like... jesus christ!!

Just learned another reason why trans-accepting healthcare is extremely important, because guess what! Cis men can get endometriosis! The one example that I found is a man with cirrhosis that potentially caused tampering with hormone levels, but the fact that endometriosis is a barely-understood and difficult-to-diagnose disease because it's a 'female' disorder makes me wonder if this is a more common occurrence than we thought, and if similar conditions in males have been misdiagnosed in the past because health conditions typically tied to females are poorly misunderstood in medicine

(Here's a link to the article in question)

240427 DAL@VGK | 🥺😢

If you want to go absolutely bonkers just look at Stede's face when he's looking at Izzy at any point after 2x03.

plagued by thoughts of bakugo losing his mind if pregnancy makes you food averse for w/e reason

I just love how this perfectly explains how low-empathy feels for me.