If You Want To Help Diabetics In Gaza, Please Donate Or Boost

The original percy jackson series is about cycles of abuse and neglect, right. Were introduced to percy as a kid who has clearly been left behind by a school system that has given up on him, restless and unengaged and self-defetist because hes been given nothing that works for him and no one even tries to meet him where he is. Then hes told no, listen, your neurodivergence is amazing and you just need to be given something that actually utilizes your unique palatte. And thats obviously the uplifting idea rick wanted for his kids, right. But once we get to know chb the same cycles are happening there too. There are kids "left behind" there too for one reason or another, because their parents dont want to claim them, because their parents werent important enough to get a cabin. Do you get it, all the kids who dont fit the most common neurotypes get shoved into the same closet. Kids are being left in a cruel world to fend for themselves without the tools they need. Theyre dying because no one bothered to accommodate them. Its such an obvious parallel that the first chapter introduces a teacher whos written to be especially hard on percys disability and she turns out to literally be one of these monsters trying to kill him. Meanwhile sally jackson tells him she named him after Perseus because she wanted a redemption for a hero whos story ended in tragedy. Meanwhile every book in the series replicates a greek myth step for step until the moment they break the cycle. Annabeth, playing Odysseus, is talked down from her hubris and grounded by her friends. Percy, playing Heracles, meets someone wronged by the original Heracles and rights his wrongs by refusing to go down the same selfish path as him. Monsters are reborn because they are--as the books explicitly call them--achetypes. These kids are stuck inside the cyclical nature of mythology because thats what happens to mythology, it gets retold over and over again. But these are the kids who have to live it. The series ends with percy being offered immortality and he rejects it because he wants to use his godly favor to force them to break their cycle of neglecting their kids. The series ends with a declaration that we cant keep letting this happen. The very first book offees the same choice. It ends with percy refusing to keep the head of medusa as a spoil of war, refusing his heroic reward. He lets his mother have the head and use it to kill gabe. Isnt that fucking crazy for a kids book? Gabe wasnt a Monster. He wasnt going to Turn to Dust and Disappear in a narratively convenient way. He was a living breathing mortal dude and percy and his mom killed him without remorse. Break the cycle of abuse!!!! Dont let this happen again!!! Anyway thats why the original percy jackson series is Hey where are you going with our breadsticks

“We don’t know where to put the young! We don’t know where to put the adults! The women were exposed! Young men are gone! Elders are gone! This is cruel, oh world!”

I need you all to hear the pain in this woman’s voice and the suffering she has seen. My experience in the medical field was voluntary and cut short by my disability, but the sight of the dead, dying and gravely injured is something you never forget. I cannot imagine what she has seen.

Many people say “I am protecting my mental health by not engaging in this media,” and okay, yes, do not spend every hour watching videos from this crisis, it will break you. But do not ignore it altogether to ‘protect your mental health’ while people DIE. While children DIE.

I’m not trying to speak over anyone on this topic so if there’s anything wrong with what I’m saying, tell me and I’ll remove it. I just want to help spread media like this showing the reality of the situation where I can.

people are calling what happened today in gaza “the flour massacre”

the flour massacre

these people just wanted to get food for their families, something as basic as flour, one of the things that the very core of humanity is built on, and israel used it as a trap to murder them in cold blood

evil is not enough of a word. there is not a word to describe what they are doing to palestine. they are bleeding her out, they are torturing her and crushing her and hoping that nothing is left to remember her by when they are done. how can anyone stand and watch what is being done with indifference? how can you watch this level of human suffering, this crime against life and feel nothing, do nothing

gentle reminder you can rise up from everything. you can recreate yourself. nothing is permanent. you are not stuck. you have choices. you can think new thoughts. you can learn something new. you can create new habits. all that matters is that you decide today and never look back.

DO NOT, AND I BEG OF YOU, DO NOT STAY SILENT. ISRAELI HAVE MASSACRED INNOCENT PALESTINIANS IN RAFAH, THEIR SAFE SPACE, THEIR CAMPS WHERE THEY WERE RESIDING. ITS A FUCKING MASSACRE. INNOCENT LIVES HAVE BEEN TAKEN, JUST LIKE THAT. MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN HAVE LOST THEIR LOVED ONES JUST LIKE THAT. AND IF YOURE STILL SILENT, SHAME ON YOU. SERIOUSLY.

For everyone here on my Tumblr I need y’all to stop what you’re doing and really lock in to the genocide happening in Gaza right now. I will post as many links as I can but the best you can do right now is be loud as fuck! About this.

TLDR Isreal has cut off all water, electricity and telecommunications within Gaza in a complete blackout and Gaza has lost their voice. Israel has already threatened to bomb Al Shifa hospital, which is currently a shelter for around 50k-60k Palestinians. These are images of Gaza Strip from an HOUR AGO. They are literally slaughtering and wiping out generations of Palestinians as we speak.

Please I need to see y’all talking about this and being loud for Palestine. Your anime yaoi twink hyperfixation will still be here tomorrow but literally thousands of innocent people may not.

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

appalachia is devastated. towns i loved, towns i visited all the time, are gone. not damaged, GONE. they are leveled to the ground. there is nothing left but rubble and ruin. people are dead. appalachia is poor to begin with and relies on tourism for a lot of its income, and multiple of those tourist locations are just...gone.

my town is okay, but it's flooded and wrecked. trees are blocking all but one way out of our neighborhood. power lines are hanging limp in the roads. we've been without power for over 24 hours and will continue to be without power for likely another 24+. disabled people and poor people are GOING to die from this. gods save appalachia.