Victory in Our Long Defeat

Side B Roman Catholic. Estrellas y mar. 25. In God I Trust. Feel free to send asks.

[calebwittebane]

i believe "nothingburger" is the cowardly enemy of the humble and kind everything bagel

[onionpug]

the unremarkable milquetoast sits somewhere in between

[tuxankhamun]

what if we got stuck in a time loop together and could only get out by falling in love 🥺👉👈

[apenitentialprayer]

And when you come, and all the flowers are dying and I am dead, as dead I may well be, you'll come and find the place where I am lying and kneel and say an Ave there for me. And I will hear, though soft, your tread above me, and o'ver my grave will warmer, sweeter be; and you will bend and tell me that you love me, and I will sleep in peace until you come to me.

from "Danny Boy," by Frederic Weatherly. Sung by Sinéad O'Connor with an added verse.

Silent Prayer Over a Grave, by Gustáv Mallý, oil on canvas, 1905-1906.

[maybeallieart]

An embroidery of the Wikipedia page for embroidery.

[setzeri]

There’s a lot going on in that little critter’s head right now.

[projectsurreal]

1. Power move. 

2. Why do people whisked away to magical worlds just automatically believe the first creature that tells them what side the person needs to help? Where’s my isekai where the MC slowly finds out they got in with like the deranged zealots and are part of the evil faction, and not the plucky rebels? 

[secondlina]

I think about this comic once per week. It’s funnier then anything I can conceive of. Mastery.

[netherworldpost]

I keep referencing this comic to my mythology clients in the back office and it is directly leading to multiple projects.

This comic is amazing.

[that-house]

[faustandfurious]

Basic rules for analysing fiction, an incomprehensive list jotted down in a hurry:

The protagonist isn’t always right

The protagonist isn’t always good

The protagonist isn’t always written to be relatable or likeable

The narrator isn’t always right

The narrator isn’t always good

The narrator isn’t always telling the truth

The narrator isn’t always the author

The protagonist’s moral compass, the narrator’s moral compass and the author’s moral compass are three entirely different things that only occasionally overlap

Pay attention to what characters do and not just what they say

Pay special attention when what the characters do is at odds with what they say

A lot of the time the curtains are blue for a reason. If they aren’t, you should read better books

[jessesajoke]

things people have done to help me during a psychoses episode

i was on the buss and i hallucinated bugs crawling all over my hands, so my friend pulled my hoodie sleeves over them with permission and held my hands through the sleeves to "keep them off". they used the logic you would in a real bug situation.

i went nonverbal in a bad one in class, so my friend wrote me a note to give to the nurse since the teacher wouldn't let her go with me.

i often am very paranoid about the delusion that meat is actually rotten, so my dad will sometimes eat a bit of it before me

instead of telling me my delusions arent real, they help me through it using logic like it was real. they dont tell me that nothings going to hurt me in my sleep, they stay with me to keep me safe. then when it passes i can realize its not real

[chartreuseschaos-deactivated202]

This is how you help people. I will never ever fathom how anyone can think it's a good idea to tell someone with a mental disorder or neurodivergence that what we're experiencing isn't real. Real is subjective.

[fnordseer5]

galadriel voice "things that were once $5 are now $20"

[whump-it-like-its-hot]

So earlier in art class today, someone drew a characters hands in their pockets and mentioned that hands are really like the ultimate end boss of art, and most of us wholeheartedly agreed. So then, our teacher went ahead and free handed like a handful of hands on the board, earning a woah from a couple of students. So the one from earlier mentioned how it barely took the teacher ten seconds to do what I can’t do in three hours. And you know what he responded?

“It didn’t take me ten seconds, it took me forty years.”

And you know, that stuck with me somehow. Because yeah. Drawing a hand didn’t take him fourth years. But learning and practicing to draw a hand in ten seconds did. And I think there’s something to learn there but it’s so warm and my brain is fried so I can’t formulate the actual morale of the lesson.

[kazoosandfannypacks]

Saying "I'm not going to draw this thing because I don't know how to draw this thing" is really shooting yourself in the foot, because you've now cut yourself off from an opportunity to grow.

I had a friend in college who was an absolutely amazing artist. I loved seeing his work! One time I said something to the effect of "I could never do that."

He told me something that, as an artist, I resonate with. He said art isn't about natural talent; it's a learned skill. When you tell an artist their level of skill is impossible for you to reach, you're assuming their level of skill is a natural gifting they have, and it discredits the hundreds to thousands of hours of hard work they've put into getting where they are today, and you're cutting yourself off from trying to reach that point yourself.

[what-hos-there]

I don't remember where I heard this but I wish I could, because it stuck with me:

Talent is THE RATE at which you learn things, not whether or not you can learn certain skills at all.

And that suddenly clicked for me. I have been very talented with a lot of things in my life and once I realized that I had basically been getting XP multipliers on my normal life experiences, it suddenly felt so much less awful to realize that I did not have the same advantage with other skills I struggle with, and that's okay. I might even have some debuffs on those, and that's okay. It's still all gaining as long as I keep working on it!!

[jellogram]

Johnny Eck was a performer from the 1930s who was born without any legs:

He's primarily known for appearing in the 1932 cult classic Freaks directed by Tod Browning.

However what I'm mostly obsessed with is this account of a magic trick he did with his non-disabled twin brother (text under the cut)

Like this is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Can you imagine

Wikipedia screenshot:

"In 1937, Eck and Robert were recruited by the illusionist and hypnotist Rajah Raboid, for his "Miracles of 1937" show. In it they performed a magic feat that amazed audiences. Raboid performed the traditional sawing-a-man-in-half illusion, except with an unexpected twist. At first Robert would pretend to be a member of the audience and heckle the illusionist during his routine, resulting in Robert being called on stage to be sawed in half himself. During the illusion, Robert would then be switched with his twin brother Eck, who played the top half of his body, and a dwarf who played the bottom half, concealed in specially-built pant legs. After seeming to have been sawn off, the legs would suddenly get up and start running away, prompting Eck to jump off the table and start chasing them around the stage, screaming, "Come back!" "I want my legs back!" Sometimes he even chased the legs into the audience. The subsequent reaction was amazing – people would scream and sometimes even flee the theater in terror. As Eck described it, "The men were more frightened than the women – the women couldn't move because the men were walking across their laps, headed for the exit." The act provided the perfect jolt by frightening people at first but then caused just as much laughter and applause. The illusion would end with stage hands plucking up Eck and setting him atop "his" legs and then twirling him off-stage to be replaced by his twin Robert, who would then loudly threaten to sue Raboid and storm out of the theater. Their act was so popular that they played to packed audiences up and down the East Coast."

[proteinmom]

the most problematic maiden at the joust

[everythingfox]

No more wrinkles, smooth body smooth brain

[fangorn-forest]

why are aliens in so many movies/shows naked. do they not have original sin. what’s going on here theologically. also why are they bald.

[coruscanttojerusalem]

-C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (1938)

[apesoformythoughts]

Babies’ noses, ergo, God exists.

[fictionadventurer]

Baby smiles, ergo, God is Love

[cuntquette999]

[why-bless-your-heart]

Life if calories didn’t exist

[daily-hyosatsu]

Some seal script today, and this typeface certainly has character! Let's get into it.

圓 (which I only learned very recently for this blog!) is a variant of 円 that is only used in proper nouns. Both characters mean round, circle, or yen/JPY. The readings are まる.い, まる, まど, まど.か, まろ.やか, or エン. 円 has some overlap with 丸, which *also* means round and can *also* be read まる or まる.い. The main difference is that 円 is for disc-shaped (or flat) things while 丸 is for spherical things.

Also, 丸 can mean perfect or self-contained, which is why it's a suffix for ship names. Star Trek fans, you know the Kobayashi Maru problem? That's this maru! 山, finally, means mountain. It’s read やま, サン, or セン.

Now, putting it all together, the surname 圓山 is read Maruyama or possibly Enyama. This way of writing Maruyama belongs to about 950 people, compared to about 3,100 people called 円山 and a whopping 204,000 called 丸山.