lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)
if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.
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no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.
I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.
I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.
If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.
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I’ve been having your aus in my brain for a while. I absolutely love them 🥰
Question for Swanatello, have you ever had a strong desire to go back home to the lair or do you even remember much about the lair being your home, even with the bracelet and board? Like, have you ever in the middle of the day just randomly think “I want to go home” while thinking about the lair?
Of course he does. He doesn't remember details very often... but the one downside of the bracelet is that now he is almost constantly aware that something is wrong. Even when he doesn't understand what's going on-- he almost always knows that something is wrong with him and with the world around him. He wishes for things he can't remember. He aches over the absence of things that he can't recall. He misses people that he doesn't know. He can't remember home, but he knows he's not there.
Swanatello hates to be alone now. Overall, it's for the best, it helps, but every evening he's introduced to the idea that something is horribly wrong, and then he's promised that someone is going to be there soon to help. And every evening, he has to wait to see if that promise will be fulfilled and if his family will come and help him.
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i feel like I haven't seen enough people mention the fact that Halsin canonically smokes, specifically exotic tobacco, and specifically out of a nice, old pipe that looks (to me) like it might be briar wood.
i just think there is something so inexplicably warm about that, that he enjoys such a small, but extravagant little luxury.
like the only thing I can imagine him smoking is something that envelops him in that woodsy-spicy, pleasantly scratching scent of good quality tobacco for the rest of the day, and the only way I can see him doing it is settled back in a nice chair, with his feet propped up, a good book in his hand, and some fuzzy critter curled up in his lap.
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horribly short summary of what im trying to accomplish here, but if you were to read a fic featuring character, a soldier honorably discharged and is officially off the battlefield and yet he can’t seem to shake off the war from clinging to his body, and he’s basically a bit of a mess and feels incapable of returning to ordinary life and there’s you, the sweetest thing in the whole world, and he keeps trying to tell you he’s no good and you’re there to help him with everything (and it kills him a bit, to see you wasting your time to help him, and it kills him because he feels like he shouldn’t be the type of person who needs help) and !! just slowburn and falling in love and just read the tags for the vibe ok, who would it be for
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I think it’s fascinating that katara says “then you didn’t love her the way i did.” there’s a double meaning there. there’s “you didn’t love her as much as i did,” which is a hurtful thing to say, regardless of whether or not it’s true. but then there’s also, “we don’t love her the same way.” which is true. they clearly love their mother differently. it’s not a matter of more, it’s a matter of how. kya birthed them, literally, but her death was also a rebirth for both of them. her sacrifice shaped their respective identities.
katara loves her mother as the site of her creation myth. she wears the memory of what kya did for her around her neck, desperate to prove herself and be the hero she needs to see in the world. sokka sees that in katara, her drive to create change out of this formative injustice, but he also sees the price of it, and shapes himself into the new sacrifice necessary for katara’s hero’s journey. if katara sees kya as her legacy, as her creator who she must honor and avenge, sokka sees kya as his fate, as his inevitable future born of an inexorable past.
who can say which child loved their mother more. but how they loved her, and how they grieve her… well. their modes of mourning differ based on the roles they see fit to inhabit and the narratives created by their formative traumas. katara’s duty is to remember: kya’s absence is physical, she wears it around her neck, her mourning is an act of creation. sokka’s duty is to repress: he forgets his [mother’s] face as he neglects and sublimates his own. consider how frustrating it must be for katara that sokka refuses to speak of her defining, mythmaking event, that he copes with own fate by attempting to ignore it. so there certainly is a difference there, in how they choose to honor kya’s memory. what katara said may have been hurtful, but it wasn’t entirely wrong.
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[chemistry] it's not a word that actors [use]. but you must endeavor a little bit to try and fall in love, in whatever that capacity is. and andrew is a very easy person to fall in love with. he's kind, generous, talented. we shot the film at the perfect junction in our friendship where there was a lot we didn't know about each other, but there was mutual admiration and respect. and a similar sense of humor. (...) yeah, it felt fizzy when we were acting. especially with that first scene at the door -- it's so well-written. you feel like you're dancing through the scene, you can go in loads of different ways, and if i went one way, andrew would go another. if that's what chemistry is, i was aware it was happening.
-- paul on chemistry and whether ‘they (andrew & paul) knew instantly that their onscreen relationship was working’ in all of us strangers, screendaily.com (1/31/24)
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Learning through immersion
(Specifically Spanish, for intermediate-advanced learners. Most of this can be used for any language though)
Consume native content without looking up anything. Just enjoy it. (Something written, or something which has a transcript/subtitles)
Now consume it a second time
Write down any interesting sentences. (Ideally with pen and paper, for it to stick)
Anything that has something that looks like a word you know, but is in a tense you’re not sure, just a new use of a tense, some interesting expression or vocab…
Go onto SpanishDict and type in those interesting conjunctions, figure out what tense they’re in
Learn that new tense! Either through SpanishDict (they have lessons for pretty much everything) or just google lessons online. This can be as in depth as you like, or you can just google a quick explanation
Create new vocab list of new words and quickly run through it
Re-consume native content after going through all your sentences with a new enlightened mind
On this run you can also read aloud (or mirror, if you have audio) the interesting sentences you wrote down. With feeling, please.
Then write something in your own words, using new grammar and vocab you’ve studied. Or speak aloud, and record yourself. You should try to write other sentences using a similar structure as whatever new interesting tense use you’ve found. If it suits you, get a native speaker to check your sentences, using Busuu, or HiNative, or something similar.
This is just one way that I’ve been enjoying recently. To be honest, you can cut out pretty much any of these steps depending on what suits you, how much time you have, etc.
The important thing is that you’re paying close attention to your content, and you absolutely need to write your own sentences afterwards.
Unless you genuinely have no interest in communicating with native speakers — maybe you just want to watch tv or read in your target language and that’s fine — but if you do want to be able to communicate, you’re going to need to practice. You should also be practicing speaking aloud. If you have nobody to talk to, talk to yourself.
This strategy is really useful for when you’ve self-studied the basics of a language and you don’t know what grammar you need to study next. Just let
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