hey gang, been hard at work on commissions. I'll repeat that I'm not in danger of going homeless or anything like that. i figured out a way to renew my rent! which is great because it means i don't have to apartment hunt again, but it also means I've got more expenses to deal with than i would've if i stayed at my friend's place for a couple of months.
please don't feel obliged to do this, especially if you're having economic issues yourself, but I've been running this blog for a few years now, posting art, writing fic, sharing analysis and jokes, so IF IT'S NOT A BURDEN and you'd like to throw a couple bucks at me for making you laugh, i do have a ko-fi. it would really help a lot while i try to find another job to keep me afloat🙏
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
A call for help for abood and Maria in Gaza!!! All thanks and gratitude for your humanitarian stances with us, and we
assistance in this difficult time. Tenth months of displacement and famine have exacerbated our suffering and difficulties beyond belief. We used all the words of sadness and sorrow to describe the situation we had reached, but such words were not enough. The scale of the tragedy and suffering is much greater than what you may have seen or seen on several social media
Hello, I am Abood from Gaza. I am 25 years old. I got married 5 months ago. This means that I got marri… Andy S needs your support for Help
Dear Friends You can support my family by either donating or sharing my campaign link with others so that the goal is reached sooner Please help us. We are very tired and no one is looking at us. Please help
us. If you canno .donate, publish the account
help us , we need you to spread our story to the world
You ever think about how Undertale uses Flowey to break the 4th wall, without actually breaking the 4th wall? The game merely imitates the vocabulary of 4th wall breaks...
...through the words of a grieving boy who just wants his best friend back
That's why the fallen human is essentially our "role" in the story. That's why Flowey is set up as a player parallel. From beginning to end, this was always a story about Asriel and Chara. In Undertale's story, the role of "player" is, metanarratively, the role of a ghost.
That's why the story is so heavily character driven. That's why progress is marked by helping people move on from the past. That's why the game ends (and can only truly end) by asking us to let go.
It's a ghost story. It's all a fucking ghost story.
