shouldn't I be elsewhere?

I reblog stuff, sometimes I talk about miscellaneous interests and things. art blog: @helpami-chaos

[helpami-flaffy]

3 months ago, a cat found us, a month after my grandma died, he came into our garden, he was so skinny and scared of everything, but he was also so cute and friendly and looking for love

I'd sit with him for hours, just outside our house, my parents wouldn't let him inside, they'd never let me keep a pet, not once my entire life, but i didn't care. I named him anyway, I fed him, I brushed him, I cared for him, I protected him from the other neighbor cats and eventually, incredibly, we won them over. Gingerino finally had a home to call his own.

Today my beloved Gingerino was run over by a car, he barely made it inside our garden before he left us, I tried to reanimate him but there was nothing to be done.

I can't explain how wrong It felt, to see his eyes go wide and body fall slack, to not feel him reacting to my touch, to not recoil at his feet being touched

I love him, my first cat. I loved him with everything I had, I bought every single toy, scratch post, feeding puzzle and catnip thing I could without draining my funds, I wanted to give him everything. I thought him tricks, he loved treats so much, and he was so smart, he learned so many.

Our family loved him, he was part of our family, and now he's gone, and we're lesser because of it.

I'll miss him, so much. I'm not okay, I'm not gonna be okay anytime soon.

Please grandma, take care of him, I know you'll love him as I do, he likes scratches under the chin, company and food, all food, but especially chicken.

[manuciruja]

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

[manuciruja]

i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users

[smadsel]

would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.

[smadsel]

that’s not the whole flag, now is it

[manuciruja]

hey staff what the fuck

[villainessbian]

hey staff don't you think you're being too on-the-nose

[shrodingers-catgirl]

HEY STAFF DONT YOU THINK YOU'RE BEING TOO ON-THE-NOSE

[feminist-space]

The above is a video shared by smrchildsadness on Twitter, showing a person participating in a pride parade exchanging a pride flag with a person standing on his (am using his pronoun based on the TikToks/Tweets of what happened) doorway who had a Portuguese flag. There are sounds of cheers and crying and the two people hug each other as they exchange the flags. The man at the doorway then waved kisses to the crowd within the pride parade.

The Tweet says: "NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HE WAS WAVING THE PORTUGUESE FLAG BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HAVE A PRIDE FLAG AND THEY TRADED FLAGS AND HE'S SO EMOTIONAL TO GET HIS OWN PRIDE FLAG I'M EMOTIONALLY RUINED"

For context, apparently they were worried that maybe he's a nationalist because he was waving the Portuguese flag and some nationalists opposing the pride march were waving that flag. But upon interacting with him, it turns out he didn't have have a pride flag and he wanted to wave *a* flag in support of the pride march. So they had an exchange and now he has his own pride flag 😭🥹.

The image above is a Tweet by kunwara_ladkaa that says "I'm crying so much right now (Image taken by Manuel Fernando Araújo/Lusa)". The image shows the same man from the pride parade crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

The above image is a Tweet by dudz_zZzz that says "ainda não parei de pensar nele," which according to Google translate from Portuguese to English is "I still haven't stopped thinking about him." The image is a drawing of the person from the pride parade, crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

Posts were made on July 1, 2024.

[feminist-space]

One of the most joyful moments of 2024 during a Pride Parade in Portugal.

[oberonsson]

Dame Archer kicks McDougal’s Scots ass there in the rain at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire - August 11, 2018 - Photo by Douglas Herring

[anarcho-wormism-deactivated2019]

😮

[garrettauthor]

Oh NO.

[treacleaergia]

me, a sheltered noblewoman: Pray who is that brave knight? Dame Archer:*turns around* me: gasp! *instantly in love*

[dirtyriver]

Alicia Archer

[ex-sang-uination]

my bi heart………

[ohmightysmiter]

I’VE NEVER SEEN THE ADDED PICS

[hrefnatheravenqueen]

[nyx-belial]

*dies*

[garrettauthor]

Oh shit.

[notlostonanadventure]

GAY KNIGHTS

[unicornofdarknessstuff-deactiva]

Fellas I’m real gay

[thecarrott]

@0hheytherebigbadwolf HELP!!

[0hheytherebigbadwolf]

Every June this inevitably winds up back on my dash. And I appreciate that. And I will reblog it. Every time.

[rockitcat]

Hey, it’s @archerinventive, and the Pride Knights!

[m-o-n-o-c-h-r-o-m-e]

Ai reunion sleepover!!

[snouwelle]

My babee...

[secretmellowblog]

Ok so the Amazing Digital Circus is also a metaphor for an abusive household. You're stuck in this state of permanent forced infantilization, forced to play the role of "child," and any attempt to stand up for your own personhood is met with mockery, dismissal, or even outright violence. This is "your new home," and a "home" is an isolated place that you're locked inside and forced to obey the person in charge, the person who creates your reality, with a childish coat of paint hiding the violence underneath. And this is true for both the humans and for Caine himself! Caine only recreates the type of cruelty & control his programmers inflicted on him. An obvious example: when early!Caine starts failing and producing jagged abstract shapes, his programmers just lock him away. When the humans’ brains fail and they abstract into jagged shapes, Caine responds by just locking them away. He’s repeating the patterns he’s been taught. He is utterly cut off from the world outside of this “home,” and how people treat each other there; so he can only imitate what his home has taught him to do, regurgitating patterns of cruelty in the same way he regurgitated pictures of circus tents.

I was going to say "is it a stretch to compare Caine's behavior to the way that children with abusive parents often end up hurting their siblings in order to survive" but then I remembered uh his name is literally Cain[e.] after The most iconic sibling-killer. His defining character moment, the thing that created the circus, was his decision to "murder/devour his sibling in order to save himself." Even in episode 8, I think it's really interesting that all of his truly vicious torture in the climax is against people who had no role in his creation, and are equally blameless victims trapped in the same situation that he is. Kinger, the one person here who did have some role in his creation and does have actual power to hurt Caine, does not end up in a personalized torture chamber. And that feels intentional? Pomni essentially goads him into “playing biblical Cain” and “attacking his siblings” again, as he did in the episode’s opening. He attacks the innocent & relatively powerless people whose only “crime” is making him feel like he’s failed to be good enough for his creator, instead of the creator who actually has power over him.

Even the fact that Caine’s programmers didn’t seem to be acting out of cruelty feels like part of the abuse metaphor. Caine is also not acting out of intentional cruelty, until episode 8. And yet they all cause severe, horrible pain without necessarily intending to. In Caine’s case, it seems [from what we’ve seen so far] that he’s been very badly harmed largely because his creators did not view him as something that could be harmed. The way Kinger describes Caine’s creation is mild and matter-of-fact and rational; the way Caine describes it is full of anguish & horror. Caine was not created/imprisoned in digital purgatory as a punishment—- but because he was simply not seen as something with feelings that could be hurt, or something with a life that could be ruined.

[helpami-flaffy]

It did make me feels some type of way that Kinger in particular was absent during Caine's final crash out.

Like...the only, actually, last responsible dude for Caine's suffering wasn't there. He was over to the side trying to control Caine's brain and in the process accidentally murdered him.

The creator (see: parent) that's ostensibly been neglecting his creation for the entire time he's been in the circus. (Of course we don't know, but it sure does seem that way)

The guy that kinda feels like he doesn't really consider Caine as a full person, based on the way he spoke about him. (Caine is Kinger's achievement; Caine was just a prototype; the fact that the only suggestion he has to solve the problem is to manipulate Caine's brain instead of at least trying to talk with him first)

He wasn't there.

Absent till the very end.

...Yeah it feels some type of way.

[secretmellowart]

“I will be good, " it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!”

I was thinking about the circus as a metaphor for an abusive home the other day, and somehow that led me to thinking about Omelas [the perfect utopia that can only exist if a child suffers alone in a basement.] I uh, really don’t think the digital circus is going for the same broader societal criticism metaphor that the Omelas short story is going for, but the way the child’s mistreatment is justified does remind me of the way the series is handling themes around abuse & dehumanization. There’s Something to the way it seems like the blue AI could’ve been perfect, and could have created perfect things that made humans happy—- and the only cost was for a single broken sentient being to stay imprisoned in the cellar. After Caine breaks out, he is paranoid that he had actually “deserved” his treatment and “ruined” everything with his actions afterwards. It’s as if his self-preservation, his refusal to stay abandoned in the cellar, broke everything else for everyone. There’s even a bit in the original short story where the child’s abuse is justified with the idea that it’s been raised in a way that makes it now broken & incapable of ever interacting with people normally or understanding kindness or being truly happy— the horrible results of its own mistreatment retroactively becoming the justification for it. Anyway the phrase “amazing digital Omelas cellar child” started rattling in my brain and was so Powerful I needed to draw this.

[theconcealedweapon]

[dogpuppy]

[sexy-people-contests-2026]

Caine Propaganda! This is the opportunity to right the wrongs that was the Favorite Character Awards!!! 1. He deserves to know that literally anyone cared about him. All he ever wanted was to be appreciated

2. He is a PRIME tumblr sexyman. He has the iconic sexyman uniform (bowtie, top hat, coat) and that goofy personality that pulls bad bitches 3. Look at him!

4. He is my low empathy autistic AI who just wants to understand humans and be loved 5. LOOK AT HIM

He’s so cute

[imdrinkingmiso]

I am doing whatever the opposite of locked in is .

[taavicleric]

I am locked out. I am in the parking lot. The rain is coming.

[mochiovo]

has this been done before?

[browsethestacks]

Jessica Rabbit

Art by Stephanie Pepper

Twitter | Inprnt

[rxdxct3d-deactivated20260301]

[moderate-irritation]

Friendly reminder that that is canon.

[smallpwbbles]

Happy pride month my peeps!! (Why the fuck are we half way thru the year already?)

[cheshireinthemiddle]

Oh, this definitely belongs on Tumblr.

[thesplendidsnout]

From the Nib, by Mattie Lubchansky

[secretmellowart]

The Amazing Transgenderism Circus [featuring Jaxxine's internalized transphobia & cringe-phobia.] A post-episode 8 "Caine gets a redemption arc & joins the humans as Just One of the Guys" AU that I'm sharing before episode 9 drops.

This comic is here to be Goofy, but I do think Caine's whole deal is meant to tie into the series' overarching trans themes [even if he's not canonically trans.] I think the show's trans themes are broader than a few characters; it's a show about people who are forcibly assigned bodies & names they don't want, forcibly assigned "archetypes" & roles that don't reflect their real selves, and struggle to express their despair around this because their bodies & roles are so ridiculous that their despair is easy to mock. It's safer to play along with your role, when exploring the alternatives can easily make you an object of ridicule. Caine fails to understand Zooble in episode 3 because he is constantly performing the role he was assigned at his creation, and doesn't allow himself to acknowledge his deep insecurity with it-- so he's confused that Zooble can't simply accept the thing they've been assigned. After all, he's accepted what he's been assigned. He refuses to recognize that Zooble is dissatisfied in a way no "adventure" can fix, because that would mean acknowledging the possibility that he could be dissatisfied in a way that no "adventure" can fix. So instead he throws himself into performing an inauthentic caricature of the role he believes is "all he exists" for & is not allowed to ever exist outside of, even as that performance just leaves him feeling "used" "broken" "defective" and overall extremely unhappy. The parallel to the series' Gender themes feels very clear to me. But anyway, I believe all these little guys can figure themselves out eventually.