When The Moment Comes And There Is No Turning Back And Anor Londo Is Ahead: - So... Mb We Will Return

Картини українського етнографа Івана Гончара, що зображають українців у традиційному одязі в побуті | Paintings by the Ukrainian ethnographer Ivan Honchar that depict Ukrainians wearing traditional clothes in everyday life

this used to be a city of Maryinka, as you can see it no longer exists, thanks to russians.

I'm writing this post because I don't want people in other countries to imagine an ever-present warzone when they think of Ukraine.

Think of your ordinary life. You go to work, go out with friends, build plans for a summer holiday. You have neighbours, maybe you don't know all of them well but they live next to you and you say hello when you see them. You live in a good apartment, with all amenities, modern appliances and stylish furniture. You pay bills for heating, water and electricity. Maybe you're renting out or it's your own place. You are a part of a globalized world although you don't think about it on such a scale.

And then one day there are explosions in your city. At first it seems shocking and unusual. But you hope it'll end soon. But they don't stop. They become more frequent. You witness your hometown get demolished. The places where you spent your free time or ran errands - the windows get shattered and the walls begin to crumble. It looks weird in the middle of a modern city.

Soon the explosions happen so often that you have to go and live in the basement. You, a person, who has a modern home, must move to a basement, with other people like you, where you don't get enough light or fresh air, let alone enough tap water or a decent place to sleep.

And then you witness death. In fact, many deaths, not just one. You get the news of people you knew, maybe your neighbours or relatives, getting killed. They are just gone. At some point you become so desensitized, the news of a dead body lying outside doesn't shock you. Sometimes you have to go outside and help other people dig out the bodies from under debris or bury them. Sometimes you see other apartments being on fire and you can't do anything. Nobody can and there's no point.

The shops are closed and you become so desparate that you start hunting pigeons for food. You share tiny portions with other people because, even though the conditions are terrible, you remain a human.

You lose everything that you owned and cherished. And it all happens in three months. You basically lose any sense of belonging to a modern society in three fucking months. That's what happened in Mariupol. When you see the photos and videos of people in dirty ragged clothes, looking like they came straight from the middle ages, in front of a ruined street - it's easy to think of them only like this. But they never lived like that before. They lived just like you. They had everything you had - TVs, computers, cars, internet, medical care, shops with stylish clothes. And then just in three months russia made them turn into dejected shadows of themselves who forgot what normal life feels like. That's a real tragedy and that's what russians have done and are still doing to us. They are ruining our normal life which isn't much different from your normal life.

Стрій з Житомирщини. Овруцький район.

Outfit from Zhytomyr region

Tried to recreate him. Did the best I could. The difference is wild.

I still remember how excited I was back in 2022, when it was reviled that in ER character maker will be countless and with such a good graphics.

Crying over this tiny Ukrainian flag amidst ruins after russian strike.

Одна половина мене хоче завести блог тут чи на друкарні і писати туди кріпіпасту/кріпіпасту про фейрі, а інша половина мене розуміє, що воно нікому нахуй не потрібне й без позитивного підкріплення мого ентузіазму надовго не стане.

Можливо піду читати увесь nosleep, з кінцями всравши свій розпорядок читання книг до наступного року...

Так бісить, коли світ довкола не крутиться навколо моїх вподобань, просто жах!!1

I am Bakaneko and I have a problem

Someone should stop me from buying new dragons. This is starting to turn into an unhealthy habit. I needed to finish my current dragons, not binge buy 4 more projects. But...

But look at them! How cute they are!

And I have undone nocturne whom I want to turn into this:

But it's sooo expensive TT Especially the Halo.

I just wanted to make staff for Felis, the Duke. And his manor needed maid, gardener and governess for the kittens. And priest, whom guy above will become someday.

Ughh.

And I have at least 4 more projects to make fairy court. But they can wait till Night of the Nocturne...

Ughhh. Why did I put this curse upon myself? Goddamnit this escapism.

Why Ukrainians didn’t produce a Tolstoy?

there are a lot of things that can piss me off, today it was this tweet:

and all i wanted to do was to ask this person, why the fuck do we need a racist misogynistic piece of shit as a standout author if we have Shevchenko as our prophet?

but you don’t know who he is? of course, you don’t. that is the thing with imperialism: you destroy other cultures while promoting yours as the only way to legitimise your rule. even if those territories are of higher cultural development. but there is always a way out of it: kill them all. kill anyone who poses an existential threat to your hegemony. throw them into jail. forbid them to write and paint. send them to gulag. kill them. torture them. execute them.

if you don’t know Ukrainian literature, it doesn’t mean that it‘s nonexistent. if you don’t know "a Ukrainian Tolstoy", it means there is a Ukrainian Bahrianyi, who was sent to the gulag but ran away and was the first person in the world to openly criticise USSR in his pamphlet Why I am not going back to the Soviet Union. "I don't want to go back to the USSR because a person there is worth less than an insect"

there is a Ukrainian Symonenko and a Ukrainian Stus. there is a Ukrainian Lesya Ukrainka and Olha Kobylyanska. a Ukrainian Kotsiubynskyi, Ukrainian Drach, Ukrainian Olena Pchilka and Ukrainian Lina Kostenko. and so many more of the bravest people who despite all wrote in the Ukrainian language about Ukrainian people and for Ukrainian people.

there are thousands of beautiful texts that weren’t translated because this would’ve harmed the empire. that is why you are reading Dostoevsky and not Khvyliovyi.

but there are also thousands of texts that were never written. just how many more poems would’ve Stus written if he wasn’t killed by the Soviet regime? how many more texts would have Pidmohylnyi, Semenko, Yalovyi, Yohansen, Zerov written if they weren’t shot at Sandarmokh?

just have many texts have the world missed out on because Khvyliovyi committed suicide as he couldn’t live in the world with Stalin’s repressions. "today is a beautiful sunny day. I love life - you can't even imagine how much", - he will write in his death note as he shot himself with his friends waiting for him in the next room.

or maybe there was a Ukrainian Nobel Prize in Literature waiting for Tychyna? maybe, but he submitted to Soviet authorities and started writing hails for the regime, suddenly forgetting his own literary style and living his entire life in fear. fear of what? fear of getting caught. of getting destroyed just as all of the previous Ukrainian intelligentsia.

I’m tired of my people being silenced. I’m tired of my poets being undermined by "great” russian literature. it’s not worth a single Symonenko’s poem. it’s not worth a single paragraph of Bahrianyi‘s prose.

the greatness of russian literature lies on the bones of Ukrainian writers. to be this high, they killed hundreds and they are still doing it today.

the body of Ukrainian children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko was found in the mass grave in Izium in September 2022.

there will be a Ukrainian Nobel Prize in Literature, and there will be more Ukrainian books. there will be Ukrainian Zhadan and Zabuzhko, Liubka and Izdryk, Sord and Kidruk. there will be Ukrainian literature.

another funny thing is that this person is Indian and let me tell you: the fact that you stand up for one empire even when your own country has suffered from the doings of another is evidence of deep colonial trauma and I hope you will cure yourself soon

vlad_shevchenko