Hey Everyone, Please Consider Buying The 2024 Itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- It's 373 Games, Game-making

Hello my fellow dykes, we have officially become visible ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

All sillies aside, please consider donating to Emily Gwen or sharing this if you can! Link

ive been out all day idk if its been on tumblr at all but shit was fucking crazy today there were a lot of arrests and a lot of people getting attacked by the police.

🚨Time is running out to save our lives from this genocide in Gaza

We are being exterminated in this war every day. We have been facing genocide for more than 9 months, and time is running out for me and my family to save our lives from this war. We are displaced, and each time is harder than the last, moving to a new area, each worse than the previous one.

There is a spread of diseases and famine due to the lack of aid entering from the Rafah crossing and the absence of medicines. There is no clean water. Every day, my family and I suffer from this miserable life, and no one stands with us.

I ask myself, how long will this genocide continue? I don't know the answer to this question. I am very sad and devastated, along with my family.

I hope you can help me and my family. Your support means a lot to us in saving our lives.

PAYPAL LINK

GOFUNDME LINK

gofundme.com

Donate to Support Ruba's Family's Urgent Evacuation, organized by Ruba Abushaban

Hi everyone, I'm Ruba from Gaza. I'm reaching out to you today with a hea… Ruba Abushaban needs your support for Support Ruba's Family's

🇵🇸🙏 don't scroll ‼️

Hello dear people

I am Nabila from Gaza,, I am speaking to you with a heavy and painful heart. I am sorry that I had to ask for help from you, but what we are living is what pushed me to do this. I was living a beautiful, quiet life, enjoying the time I spend with my grandchildren and seven daughters.

Imagine waking up to find that your world has changed in a moment, and you have lost your security and peace, and your home has been destroyed, and you have become homeless and living in conditions that no human being can bear. I suffer from chronic diseases, high blood pressure and diabetes. My medication has run out for some time and I am facing difficulty in obtaining it in light of the lack of treatment in hospitals and health centers. Most of the time I cannot feel my limbs, but I am trying to resist. I do not want to die in such circumstances. I still have hope that this war will end and we will rebuild our beautiful and beloved country again and live in safety. I believe in divine power and justice and that all this pain will go away.

I am trying to endure these difficult conditions that I live in inside a small tent and a bathroom a few meters away from my tent and you know the conditions of diabetics in this case but once again there is still hope. I used to live at the expense of my daughters but with all sadness and regret they have all lost their homes and places of work and they have no source of income left and their situation is like that of any Gazan who is still inside Gaza struggling with death, hunger, diseases and extreme heat each one struggling to feed his children I cannot ask them for help so I have resorted to you and I am fully confident in your humanity to help me so that I can provide food and treatment and provide a better tent than the one I live in because it is torn and the place is full of insects. If I can provide treatment, I want to continue my life and see my grandchildren grow up around me. I don’t want to go now. I know that I don’t have as much life left as I have, but I have the right to live and enjoy this. Please don’t hesitate to help your mother who has come to you with a heavy and sad heart. Every dollar will make a difference in my life. Don’t leave me to live this pain. I appreciate what you are doing for every Palestinian inside and outside Gaza. I pray to God that you don’t go through what we are going through, my beloved.

Medical visits and insulin: $5000

Travel and transportation to hospital, coordination with Egypt's border: $5000

gofundme.com

Donate to Support Nabila's Fight for Health and Dignity, organized by Eben Taylor

Hello everyone, my name is Eben Taylor and I live in Massachusetts, USA. My … Eben Taylor needs your support for Support Nabila's Fight for

Gravity fall’s greatest mystery…

Quick doodle after watching the new episode!

Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.

And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.

And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.

Take these scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.

This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.

And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.

Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.

So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.

It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.

Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.

These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.

Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.

Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.

And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).

But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.

Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.

On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:

"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."

Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.

And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.

Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.

So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.

This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.

In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.

To conclude, I wish fandom would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.

who else up hurkleing their durkleing

I got two chronic illnesses and one huge crush on Sal Fisher. Thus funny comic to cope!