Happy Tumblr Day

god this scene i haven’t written would be so emotional if it came with 50k words of context i also haven’t written

Nona the Ninth is one of my favorite books of all time. Not just because it's Locked Tomb, but it is the purest form of one of the big messages the series is trying to divulge.

The price of love is grief. We will never be free of it as long as we love anything at all. Our family, friends, our pets, even beloved media. Anything that connects that deeply to us that we love it will leave a gaping hole when it's gone.

But no one rejects loving to avoid grief. Every one of the characters holds on desperately to something they love, to levels that seem unhealthy to us. They want the perks without the cost.

John is holding on to a world and people that died 10k years ago.

The lyctors cling desperately to their cavaliers memories, to the point of being willing to end the 9 houses to honor them.

Cam held on to Pal, Pal held on to Dulcie. Harrow held on to Gideon so hard she disappeared her from her memory to avoid the grief she would pay for the privelege of caring for her.

But Nona loves indiscriminately. She loves the polluted sky, she loves the sad people, she loves the stray dogs and her friends and her teachers and Varun. She loves Pyrrhas lying ass, she loves Camilla and Palemedes, she loves crown and even cares about Judith. Nona isn't afraid of grief, because to her all that love balances it out. Nona is the only one in the end willing to pay the price for that 6 months of unconditional love. She knows from the beginning of the book that her own days are numbered, but she doesn't shy from it and avoid loving.

She loves all that much harder.

"If you could see your whole life, start to finish, would you change anything?" The movie Arrival (2016) approaches this same theme. If you knew what you'd lose, would you go back to avoid it? Would you keep away from the people and things you knew you'd lose? Would you shy away from experiencing love just because it hurts?

"Love and Freedom don't coexist, warden."

*goes on sefaria dot org*

i'm a reform jew and i'm more religious now than i've ever been. I never grew up marking Tisha B'Av and probably didn't even know what it was. I can't remember if I fasted last year or not, but I'm going to fast this year. I am also going to refrain from cannabis for the day which I usually struggle with but I think if I'm doing it for am yisrael and hashem i will be able to.

I feel like practicing any skill would be way more fun if I could have a lil level increase thing that pops up in front of me every time I do good like in Skyrim

a man takes off his kippah to reveal another, smaller kippah

Once and a while I see a piece of tlt fanart where harrow is really wrapped around gideon and I love that a lot. I drew myself a little bit of it as a treat today:

and then got carried away

I was way too ambitious with these poses for drawing with pen and some shitty whiteout tape

(x)

An embroidery of the Wikipedia page for embroidery.

update: he was so pleased :D he says if you have any questions, you should ask me (me Anne, here on tumblr) and he (my roommate) will be happy to answer them in detail

making my way slowly through your roommate's biblical hebrew gtn translation. not a scholar of semitic linguistics but i am learning modern hebrew and trying to read the fic is absolutely breaking my brain, i understand maybe every fifth word at BEST. but i love it. and it's indirectly helping me study for an upcoming exam. tell your roommate i appreciate him very much

AWW anon thank you, I will tell him as soon as he wakes up!! I'm also learning modern hebrew rn so I'm having the same experience 😂 Good luck on your exam!! if you want any help practicing (or with understanding the fic) feel free to PM me :D this makes me so happy :D