Insert witty title --> [here]

(If you're on FF14 this blog is the main for Koke Qalli (songbirds-and-bows) & Aran Aethersmith (steel-and-aether) (Balmung) or Lucien Gravespast (glowinggunmetal), who each have their own blogs... otherwise, HEY LOOK I DO STUFF HERE!)

[teaboot]

Do you have any advice for someone else who is in the very beginning stages of the "life is a precious gift rapidly escaping me, I have to change to become someone better and be happy before I've wasted all of it" transition? I'm tired of losing so much life and joy to grief and trauma and I also want to start creating and seeing and enjoying as much as I can for my tiny time as a carbon based lifeform but it's overwhelming to say the least

Actively seek out things that inspire wonder

Look for the good parts. There are good parts. There are interesting parts. There will always be good and interesting parts.

Treat yourself kindly. This one is difficult.

Do things out of ridiculous whimsy.

Practice cog itive behavioural exercises to self-examine and address beliefs and behaviors that are causing suffering.

Don't argue when people compliment you.

Don't rush yourself, and don't assume it'll be like this forever when you have a backslide. These things happen. Over time, they happen less.

Be honest with the people you love and trust.

Tell people how much they mean to you and what you like about them.

Help others and find satisfaction in being the stranger that did something good

Consider speaking to a medical professional, my antidepressants and anti-anxiety medical took some time to figure out but life is WAY better.

Have a silly little craft or hobby.

Let yourself be bored sometimes. Stand outside in the rain and let yourself get wet. Go on a walk. Put your phone in a different room and wander off. Meet up with a friend and go on a long walk together to nowhere in particular

Start doing things because you want to and it feels good, not just because you think it's something you should say yes to.

Say yes to things.

Take a random day of the week and go into a store or a business you've never been in before.

Compliment strangers when something about them is striking.

Read books and watch movies that make you feel the exact right amount of ecstatic and embarrassed, and make all the silly noises about it.

Collect scraps of fabric and little trinkets and all the little textures and colours you love and stash them in a shoebox or something like a tiny dragon's hoard.

Start a collection of something small and inexpensive. Like corks.

Make food with ingredients you've never used before

Make long lists of all your favorite things- flowers, bugs, songs, foods, places

Start a trash-book to fill with scraps of neat wrappers and bits of paper and colored fabric from old ruined clothes

Imagine yourself as a alien from a dead and barren world who has just arrived on this planet for the very first time and imagine how excited you would be by every little thing

Cannot recommend enough that you befriend a creature

[generaljenobi]

[dduane]

If you don't want LinkTree putting your imagery into AI... get out now

Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:

IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

…Just so you know.

[kosmogrl]

[twinklecupcake]

Hi everyone.

I have a very heavy, very tragic announcement.

This morning, my partner @sprayofstars, suddenly passed away from what the doctors tell us was a heart attack. We've only just gotten home (myself and @darkprincecait) and are still trying to process this. Just yesterday, everything felt fine. We were making plans. Had plans. We'd just had a fun vacation.

My partner of over a decade is gone.

I know I'll get through this, but Cait and I need some support and love. And those whom I owe commissions to, of course, please please please bear with me during this time.

Thank you.

[c-is-for-circinate]

There are exactly two takes on 'do your child soldiers kill people or not?' that I really respect, and it's Fullmetal Alchemist and Animorphs.

[c-is-for-circinate]

From the replies:

@nordicninja Aaaand Avatar the last Airbender

And like, okay, true! But also consider: on this particular front, AtLA is good at this because it is a solid 8.5/10 on the FMA side of this scale.

(The 8.5/10 isn't a critique of AtLA, which is an excellent show on all counts, but it doesn't quite measure up to the FMA threshhold here simply because of the limitations of being an American kids' show. It can do the thing, but it can't foreground the thing or spend five seasons of anime/27 volumes of manga meditating on the ravages and implications of violence, because it's busy also being aimed at 10-year-olds and about other stuff too.)

Witness:

You could defeat the enemy, if you killed him. Your allies say you should. It would work.

It wouldn't even make you a bad person -- not here, not now, not in these circumstances. Of course you wouldn't be "as bad as they are," that's bullshit. Putting down a single mad dog does not equal literal genocide. FFS.

You could do it. You should do it. It would work, and isn't that the most important thing? To stop the horror? In the light of all the sheer destruction and evil at play, your own personal lily-white rejection of culpability is purely selfish. Isn't it?

But, god, you don't want to. You don't want to kill. The whole point is that life is important, is sacred, is worth protecting. You haven't been forced to yet. You keep finding ways around it. You've seen enough death. You don't want to do it.

Here and now, if you did -- it would fix the problem. It would fix things! It would save the day! The world would be inarguably better. You know this!

You know this. You know it because the world will not stop telling you this. Everything you've seen, everything you've been taught. Everything the people you love and respect say to you. And it's not a lie, it's not made up, it's true -- killing, here, in this one case, would help.

Why is the world so set on forcing you to kill? Why is this how the world works, that a child (you're not as young as you were when you started, but you're a child, you were a child, the first time somebody assumed you would someday simply have to be a murderer) gets handed a weapon and made to use it?

We are using the rules that the world set. We are using the rules that the genocidal maniac set. They are the same rules, because there's a reason genocidal maniacs are able to come to power in the first place, because the world is built in a way that violence works.

You know this. You're good at it! You're skilled at violence. It's how you've come so far.

But.

((and you know, the only reason you're able to have these thoughts, is because other people have already killed for you. will kill for you again. will wear the blood on their hands to save your life. somebody else is taking it so you don't have to, and you do not get to forget that.))

But maybe, if you're skilled enough. If you're good enough. If you can find a third option. Maybe, maybe, if you are just clever enough, if you're willing to risk losing entirely, you can do more than save the day.

Maybe you can rewrite the rules. Maybe you can rebel, not just against the genocidal horror villain about to doom the world, but against the entire world in the process.

If you're good enough to find the loophole -- to master the magic -- to put everything you've ever learned into practice. If you can find another way. If you can prove that another way exists.

Maybe you get to do more than close the door on one evil.

Maybe you get to open a new door on the possibility of changing the world.

[c-is-for-circinate]

And also:

@thoughtful-collections Could you go into the Animorphs side of the child soldier question? Obviously they do kill and I think one character even kills many of the yerks while they are defenceless and justifies it as a necessary step to win. I suppose that series is saying there is no avoiding murder/killing/getting your hands dirty in war?

Yesssss

Look, there are a lot of child soldiers in the genre, whatever 'genre' that may be. Some kill easily, thoughtlessly, like any action movie star. Some have Important Moral Lessons on how killing makes us no better than the bad guys. Many of them get their very own generous plot device get-out-of-jail free card: either they have some form of captivity that their opponents get sent to at the end of a fight and we never have to think too hard about false imprisonment without trial (Steven Universe; at least one instance of Power Rangers?; Batman and Robin generally; etc), or, their opponents aren't really people, so it doesn't actually count as murder (media as diverse as the Persona series all the way back to good old Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Sometimes, through sheer force of will, grit, and absolute unparalleled protagonist energy, child soldiers get to avoid killing in a world that makes it a genuine option.

Animorphs looked at all of those options, and it said, nah.

You want a war story, little child? Okay, the books say. Here's a war story. This is war.

Here's how it starts: you're goofing around with your friends one night. You take an ill-advised turn. You watch somebody get horrifically murdered.

No, you can't save him. Yes, you can save yourselves. Get used to that. Get used to it so, so fast.

You're on a trolley. Up ahead are two tracks. On one side: a dozen evil aliens. On the other side: your brother. Make a choice.

Good job, you didn't crash the train into a cliff. By the way, did we mention there are a thousand more tracks? More people tied to each and every one?

You get to put your hands on the steering wheel. You get to drive the trolley. This is a gift. Make a choice.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

You can jump off the train, if you want. You don't have to be the one to steer. Maybe you'll even survive the fall. Maybe the friends you're leaving behind will be good enough to make sure they don't run you over on your way down.

Your mom is on one of the tracks, by the way. Your dad. Your sisters, your cousins. Your brother, still.

You don't have to steer. You don't have to do this. You can let the train take its course, you can let it plow through all of humanity. You can let it happen. You get to do that, if it's what you want to do.

Nobody is coming to save you.

On one track: the aliens have names, thoughts, dreams, personalities. On the other track: there are six billion humans on this planet today.

Every single option in front of you is a war crime. If you're lucky, you'll get to pick which one.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

It's fun sometimes, driving a train. When there's nobody in the way, for just a little while. When you can pretend you're mowing down enemies in a video game. When you can give into the rush of adrenaline and just be glad you have the skill.

Maybe, maybe somebody will come to save you. They'll take over steering. You won't have to choose.

(Refusing to act is still a decision.)

Who will they choose to hit? Will they care? Will they care enough?

You watch TV. You watch Xena, and X-Files, and Buffy. You can pretend to live in a world where your enemies are nameless monsters without souls, if you want. If that makes it easier.

Is it easier, to kill them soft and vulnerable and completely powerless, unable to fight back? Does that feel better than killing the ones hunting you down, weapons in hand?

You are looking for a loophole. You are looking, and looking, and looking for a loophole. You don't get to fight monsters without souls. You don't get to lock them up in tiny bubble jail. They are going to kill you. This is what you get.

It's you. You're the one standing here. This is what's happening.

Refusing to act is still a decision.

(There is a loophole, eventually. A third path. One of you finds it, eventually.)

(It would not have worked, without years of war first. It took you years of war to find it and if you hadn't killed so, so many, it would not have worked.)

You don't get to be good, in war. You don't get to save the day by sacrificing your own life and remaining morally pure. That would be too easy. War means dead bodies. That's what it means.

That doesn't mean you give yourself over to despair. That doesn't mean you shrug and figure the lives being spent don't matter. You don't get to throw your own moral code on the altar of heroic sacrifice and claim to be the real victim here. It never stops mattering. It will never, ever get to stop mattering.

That doesn't mean you never fight. It just means that when you choose to step up and fight for something, you'd better be goddamn sure it's worth the cost, because chances are somebody a lot less powerful than you is going to be the one to pay.

On one track: Your brother. Your cousin. Seventeen thousand unarmed, helpless enemy agents.

On the other track: a new train's barreling straight at you and all six billion members of the human race. All-out slaughterous war. Giving over the steering wheel to the last hands that decided the best answer to their problems was genocide.

(REFUSING TO ACT IS STILL A DECISION)

You make a choice.

[kosmogrl]

how it feels when one of your hyperfixations comes back and stronger than ever

[ilynpilled]

how it feels when one of your hyperfixations comes back and stronger than ever

[pulim-v]

how it feels when one of your hyperfixations comes back and stronger than ever

[adorkastock]

*lays this at your feet*

*flopping noises*

[adorkastock]

In case the click through link wasn't clear: It's a free+ pack on Ko-fi

[akindplace]

being chronically ill is like being stuck between a rock and a hard place

[akindplace]

like an illness can have horrible symptoms that can cost you your health and your life but the medication available that can treat it (but not cure it) might cause you to have horrible side effects that can cost you your health and your life. it’s a game of chance sometimes. i’d still always choose the treatment over the illness, and i know i have it better than people had in the past but sometimes i still wish i didn’t have to go through this hell

[frightfullytreeish]

reblog to slowblink at your mutuals

[mawofthemagnetar]

What do you mean “chat” is now referring to ChatGPT and not twitch chat? What? What? What the fuck? No?

When I address chat I am speaking to a presumed Greek chorus of real human people shitposting on their lunch break, not a machine that devours lakes to covert electricity into slop.

[tesb]

The Force will be with you, always. HAPPY STAR WARS DAY!

[kalopsiahaze]

Sketch Commissions for Medical Care

I forget to post art a lot but I'm opening some quick 20-30$USD sketch commissions for medical care.

I need to have 5 teeth removed [all wisdom teeth and a broken tooth], be treated for a gum infection, and receive fillings for cavities. It's not really something I can put off, but I cannot work and thus need help paying for these things.

Currently the cost of my entire treatment is a little over 4,700$USD The wisdom teeth removal and extraction of my broken tooth is the most pressing, and is currently priced at 3,340$USD

Examples of my art:

Slots are infinite, though may take time to complete due to my chronic fatigue. Price is subject to change depending on character complexity or amount of characters [As these would require me to take longer on commissions]

Please DM me here if you are interested [Reblogs are immensely appreciated if you otherwise do not want to, or cannot commission me]

[kalopsiahaze]

Not really an update I wanted to make but. Just some extra stuff that's happened:

The dental office will not let me break up treatments between what I need most right now. They're also requiring 40% of payment for a treatment upfront before I am even allowed to schedule the appointment.

I am unlikely to be able to get one of their financial plans, due to being unable to work and struggling to get my doctor to listen to me regarding disability. I also do not have any sort of credit score.

Every dentist around me does not take my state's medicaid, but I am extremely likely to lose that medicaid starting next month, due to changes in requirements needed.

I called a second office and needed to plan around their stuff, when I called back the next day they were no longer taking new patients. This new place would've been significantly more affordable, but I cannot guarantee a time when they would see me.

The condition of my teeth are getting worse, and my wisdom tooth that has a bad cavity in it is starting to cause almost 24/7 pain that painkillers or orajel just don't solve. I can barely sleep because of it anymore.

I still do not have any of the money necessary to even afford the fillings and removal of my broken tooth + the wisdom tooth with cavities.

Due to the 24/7 pain I cannot guarantee any sort of commissions being done in a timely manner, however I haven't received any since I posted this. But if you would still like to help me out, I have a kofi where you can donate. All of the money I get will be going to directly to caring for my teeth.

Buy DARETODREAM a Coffee

Become a supporter of DARETODREAM today!

My kofi has a tracker of the overall total amount of money needed for my procedures.

Please help a Black, Trans, and Queer artist out if you can.

[jateshi]

when tumblr works better than any other social media, you stare.

but it's bsky, so you laugh, too.

[ristay]

Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew

Follow me on Webtoons

[ruby-white-rabbit]

The window visual did me in I’m wheezing

[floralpopie]

NO

[greatmountainfloofsquatch]

WELP

[doctor-seamonster]

I haven’t seen this in years and yet it is burned into my memory forever.

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

This is on the short list of Eternal Reblog because it’s fucking legendary.

[magrowette]

An honourable candidate for the @hellsite-hall-of-fame

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

HBO Harry Potter is going to set records on an astronomical level, and I imagine more than half the people reblogging you are performative cowards and will watch it anyway directly on HBO. (I say that as anti HP and JKR). Pretending like it’s not going to be the most successful show in HBO’s history is insane and really underestimating it. Boycotts are not going to work because it is a tiny blip of people willing to do so. What do we when it is mega popular and people continue to love and enjoy her work?

So I wouldn't even answer this ask EXCEPT it's a fantastic example of someone who hates you and wants you to undermine your cause pretending to be on your side, so let's go through the points.

1.) Makes the assertion that you've already failed eight months in advance. Wants you to give up and give in because you think the cause is already lost.

2.) Implies that everyone else is secretly gonna do it, so you may as well too. Wants to chip away at your resolve.

3.) Claims to be on your side and therefore a trustworthy source.

4.) "Boycotts don't work." Demonstrably they do, as long as people are organized and persistent. Look at how Target and Starbucks are sweating and begging people to come back. Boycotts work.

If someone comes to you doing this shit, they are not your ally, they're trying to mess with you. They want you to fail. On the bright side, they're also often an indicator that your cause has gotten big enough that they're worried enough to go about it all underhandedly, so yay?

[vaspider]

I have seen so many people saying "ohhhh but HP is SO popular, it will always be that way, we'll can't fight that." Buddy, I am nearly 50 years old. The number of things that I have been told that about, truly worldwide phenomena which were everywhere for what felt like an eternity, which, if I bring them up to anybody under 30, they've never fucking heard of them, and if they've heard of them, they definitely haven't seen or read them? And then the stuff from my parents' generation that I only know about bc my dad told me about them?

Nothing is immortal. Nothing lasts forever. Y'all will quote the Ursula K. LeGuin thing about capitalism and the divine right of kings and then unironically say that the shitty racist wizard books by the terrible TERF just can't be fought against. It's so fucking weird.

[buttstothemoon]

Harry Potter is the most painfully Millenial thing on this Earth and, as a generation, we are at peak uncoolness right now.

HBO, the dragon-fucking, mobster murdering, gang cussword network does not have a lot of play with parents, or the general public. At best, they're third fiddle to Disney and Netflix, and HP is an obvious play for them to steal market share and shed their historical perception (see also: Sesame Street)

Production is clocking in around $100 million per episode. This thing is primed to be a failure. If it does anything less than the absolute best numbers of any TV show in the last decade, it is a failure.

A huge portion of their built in audience has less than zero interest in supporting this project, and will actively shit talk it to whomever wants to hear.

Again, Harry Potter is so uncool right now. I know it's been 30 years almost since the first film, but it's been less than 20 since the last one, not counting the Fantastic Beasts. It's only been four years since a Harry Potter was released! We've had, on average, one film every two and a half years.

There are few things in human history that are going to eat as much shit as this series will. They're making a thing that no one asked for, marketing to a demographic that doesn't give a shit, whose built-in-fanbase harbours the kind of hatred for the IP that only betrayal can forment, and they're going to spend more money than even God has bringing it not to the silver screen but some dogshit third-rate streaming service at a time when folks are truly and utterly sick of streaming service bullshit.

[vaspider]

"Rowling Funds Hate" Unisex Cotton Tee Shirt

Our "Rowling Funds Hate" Unisex Cotton Tee Shirt is available in sizes S-5XL. Printed for you by us; ships directly from in Portland, OR USA

:)

[queerofthedagger]

the fun thing about having a mental health crashout in your thirties is that sure yeah you're crashing out, but at the same time there's a part of you standing across the room smoking ben affleck style, going yeah yeah you're crashing out. you crashed out before you will crash out again can we wrap this up yet. and the most annoying part about it is that they're right, and that that does Not stop you from crashing out even a little. love and light on planet earth.