January Was A Tough Year But We Made It

You have no idea how happy I was seeing you reply. I literally thought before taking nap to look through your blog shits and giggles. I recoiled so fast when I saw this, literally scrolling to fast. I've been grining for 5 minutes.

In all seriousness: KEEP COOKING RAAAAHHH. Thanks for the art, I'll feed off this for a few months/j

One. Your art as always so crunchy and soft, but fluffy. Like creme and yellow or something. Or Turkish pistachio cake(try it with mint tea, it's amazing🎊🎊☺️)

Two. Tomi my love, you are so beautiful and that is a blessing in itself(I imagine Douma calling it that, only reason to use it now huh?). Also, I see the 'first interaction, then falling for someone trope years later' your doing *squints eyes*

Three. I find it interesting that Enmu has a hard time bonding with kid than Douma. Reminds me of post partum depression but kinda switched(My dad didn't bond with me quickly as a baby or toddler, so I kinda get it.)

Four. I notice whenever I look for Tomi eyes they are harder to find in your black and white sketches. When I think it's their eyes, I realized that is its eye-lid. Then thought of a cool thing: if their eyes glowed, it could be seen beneath the lid. Kinda like a creepy but mystical vibe, a new way to lure in prey or something(fish like shiny light)

Tldr: great art *nom and gives fish to Tomi and therapy gift card to Enmu and Doumu.*(Why did I proof read this 6 times to be perfect??)

(One) That sounds delicious. I will be trying it as soon as possible.

(Two) I should have known something was cooking when you went through all my Tomi posts 😭 /pos

Also, with Shuumei and Tomi, while I wasn't really going in with a trope in mind, it definitely falls into it. I just imagined that a kid with no other social bonds would attach pretty quickly to whoever showed them any form of affection. Tomi never had friends or a social circle, so Shuumei is quite literally its entire world beyond its parents. If Shuumei wasn't a nicer person than they are, Tomi would be exploited very easily. That isn't to say what Tomi does struggle with in relation to Shuumei isn't difficult though. When your love interest's parents are former Hashira, you can't expect their favor. No matter how many years its been since the demon war ended.

(Three) There's a reason that Enmu bonded with Douma but not Tomi. Enmu is an inherently selfish and unempathetic person. He didn't even like Douma when he first met him, he was just using him to take over his rank. He didn't feel remorse until he realized that Douma was genuinely on his side and that Douma was aware that Enmu was using him, he just didn't care because he was desperate for the company. Douma proved many times that he was useful and reliable. He treated Enmu like he was worth being alive, even though Enmu believed the opposite. The bond that Douma earned with Enmu is one a baby never earned. Even if it is his and Douma's baby. It doesn't serve him in any way beyond the fact Tomi's birth meant Douma focused less on his depressive spiral and gave him something to live for. Very honestly, when Tomi was born, he could only conceptualize it as a tool for keeping Douma happy and alive. But he didn't want to be like that when he thought of his own mother who treated his own birth like a tool to keep his father with her (and it didn't even work). So he starts to put in the effort, but still really struggles to emotionally bond with Tomi. He just really doesn't know how to, and it makes him feel constantly inferior that Douma bonded with Tomi effortlessly when Enmu couldn't. It felt like a piece of him was broken and that whatever instinctive drive a parent was supposed to have was missing inside him. He doesn't understand his relationship to Tomi as a bond until Tomi starts developing an easily detectable personality, since Tomi stops being a lump of meat in his eyes and starts being a person he can engage with and understand.

(Four) That's interesting! Tomi actually does have light reflective eyes, though it's not quite the same as what you're thinking of. See this post.

Fun fact, Tomi's body (while it can physically eat non human meats and keep them down) can only minimally process animal meats. That is why they're so twiggy. They basically have the demon version if pica. It doesn't like how it feels to eat human meat, and often felt sick or uncomfortable as a result. So it switches to animal meats to try and find something that didn't sit so roughly in the gut. They found it but it's not nutritionally dense for a demon to eat animal meats.

this website - the "everyone here is notoriously already broke" website - has been funneling thousands of dollars to various gaza gofundmes. and then the "required" amount per person got raised, and then gofundme and the finance sites wouldn't release the money, and then the crossing got destroyed and no one can get through. and even when something reaches its goal, I've never actually seen a "success story" about someone getting out or getting their family of rafah because of it

serious question, has any of this mattered? did anyone actually get out because of a fundraiser? have we been doing anything at all other than laundering money for corrupt border guards? is this a better use of donations than, say, the esims? or donating to aid orgs? or any other way of trying to help?

"and i know the gofundmes here can be overwhelming"

here's the thing. fuck being overwhelming, fuck getting exhausted seeing the fundraisers every day, none of that matters. my only question is, have people actually been benefiting from it? not in a "I think someone is impersonating people and scamming us" way (I trust the verification work people have been doing), but in a "is this actually going somewhere" way. if every single "$5000 x number of people" fundraiser got filled up to the maximum, would it make a single bit of difference?

most of the families that made it to egypt before the border was destroyed by israel did so through funds raised by gofundme, including ahmed @90-ghost on tumblr, at least four people i know personally, and maybe hundreds more i know through acquaintances or i've seen on twitter. if you donated to these campaigns you would know this because they usually post updates saying "good news! we were able to get x out of gaza, but now we're trying to get the rest of our family out, so we've upped our goal to x."

most of the campaigns remain open because they will try to get the most vulnerable members of a family out first, after which they will try to get the rest out.

since the border was destroyed right now people are being displaced internally, which means instead of the money going to corrupt border guards it is used to buy tents, buy medical supplies, buy food, or rent some of the few units still standing in different areas within gaza. basic foodstuffs in gaza now can cost up to 200USD. and it is only getting worse and more extreme.

the only entries and exit are through israeli crossings now that egypt has no control over. egypt could be bribed. israel can't. they have a small list of injured children they occasionally evacuate through israel-controlled crossings and airbases, but just so you understand how this is also part of the genocide and how israelis use any excuse to allow more people from gaza to die, netanyahu froze one crossing as a 'retaliation' for the bombing of (syrian, arab) children in majdal shams that no one has actually taken responsibility for.

other crossings were out of use for weeks because israel allowed settlers to block the aid trucks going into gaza, until the rafah border was destroyed and these blockades were no longer necessary.

they also consistently close the single humanitarian corridor, kerem shalom crossing. yesterday it was open to deliver 80 bodies of unidentified dead palestinians to be buried in a mass grave, today the "humanitarian route" is closed until further notice.

if the border was still open, you would have more feel-good stories and you would be confident your money was going to evacuate people (also known as ethnic cleansing. i hope you understand that this best-case scenario you're referring to, this hope you want to cling to, is forced displacement of people who have lost their homes and who may never be able to return.)

but israel destroyed the border. people are still raising money to register their families for once it does open, but there is no guarantee of when that will happen, and most of the money ends up used so they can survive their current displacements within gaza.

there's a lack of feel-good stories because it's a genocide. that's all. this has been nothing but ten months of torture and slow death and closing every avenue for survival to gazans. now you know what that means.

anyway you should donate to e-sims for gaza because those are also running out

the government deleted its covid-19 information websites and replaced it with this

OpenAI are scumbags.

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

keep up the good work you guys inshallah the stress gets to be too much :)

Just some quick questions--

is it normal to be in pain after writing? More specifically your face? Just wanna make sure of something.

Hey. International people.

Keep calling it the Gulf of Mexico or whatever your term is for it. Do not allow the Republican regime to label that body of water the Gulf of America to the world. The name came from a the term Mexica, what the Aztecs called themselves. It’s been called the Gulf of Mexico since the 1600s.

Keep calling it Mount Denali. The original name before it was Mount McKinley. Don’t let the First Nations be erased.

It may sound stupid and petty. But it is an attempt to rewrite history and make us forget the origins. It is a literal white washing of history. This type of censorship is a beginning to greater evils.

PSA for Switch owners

The latest 11.0 update means that Google Analytics is a thing on the switch and turned on. What that means is that Nintendo has a deal with Google to share with them your data for advertisement purposes.

To turn it off

go to the eShop

go to your profile where your funds and account info is

go down to the bottom of the page

there you will see “Google Analytics Preferences”

select the Change

select “Don’t Share”

Please spread the word. Really shitty of Nintendo to just quietly start allowing Google to spy on users for advertising.

Readers, make sure you have all your favourite Ao3 fics downloaded.

Writers, make sure you have copies of all the fics you have posted on Ao3.

I don’t want to be alarming, but things could get really bad really fast. OTW shared this today on Twitter, and I'm a bit worried about it 😅

Ao3 is a non-profit organisation. If they have to start paying taxes, I have no idea what will happen.