highlighting @firasmuhaisenn’s campaign again. he and his sister @nisreenameen are medical students in Egypt; since the genocide began and their father’s construction company was destroyed, they have been responsible both for providing for their six family members (three of whom are children) still in Gaza and paying their university fees so they can continue pursuing their dream of becoming doctors. as of november 12th, they’ve raised under $11k CAD, and donations continue to be extremely slow. their family’s weekly food costs alone are over $700 CAD, and Firas and Nisreen also have to manage their day-to-day needs, all while saving to pay the next round of school fees so they aren’t forced to abandon their education. if you have funds to spare, please consider supporting Firas and Nisreen’s campaign so they don’t have to choose between their family and their future! your help makes all the difference.
(Firas and Nisreen’s campaign has been verified by @/90-ghost)
only one donation since wednesday. please please donate if you can and share. i can’t overstate how much of an impact a few seconds of your time can have
no donations for three days. can we get Firas and Nisreen to $10,600 by the weekend? only $57 CAD is needed!
nothing for 10 days now. just total stagnation. please keep sharing; it helps even if you can’t give anything yourself!
haha… realized that when morwen and húrin meet at túrin and niënor’s grave it’s the very first time they’re together as a family. but it’s still an illusory reunion, because niënor isn’t really there.. something something niënor taking on the role of lalaith even in death; the symbol that the family is sundered forever and a return to the grief of childhood that túrin can never escape
The “friendly Indians”, that kids all across the US dress up as in generic stereotypical caricature “Indian” costumes in the week leading to Thanksgiving, are not characters in a play, or people of the past. They are the Wampanoag Tribes— learn their history today.
“In 1692 the Wampanoag Tribe Had Its Own Agenda: In American lore, friendly Indians helped freedom-loving colonists. In real life, the Wampanoags had a problem they didn’t know how to fix.” By David J Silverman in The Atlantic
Fahed (@/fahed-2) & Reem (@/reem-reem-0) Shehab have been campaigning like crazy for their family since early May. They’ve survived a year of bombing, shelling and shooting, displacement after displacement. Now, they’re faced with winter, and with it the threats of environmental disaster and severe starvation that loom over all Palestinians in Gaza. If this wasn’t enough: they recently ran into issues with their campaign that was nearly completed (read more). A new campaign has opened to raise emergency funds for basic necessities while the previous organizer deals with the issue, but is currently very low on funds. On top of this, they’ve faced multiple shadowbans on here, impacting their ability to campaign (including earlier this week. Twice).
Despite their indescribable exhaustion, grief and terror, they’ve persisted, risking their lives daily just for reliable internet connection, because their family of 13—a baby girl who’s just 5 months to her 14 year old cousin to their 60 year old grandmother—are totally reliant on these funds, on them, to survive and evacuate.
For right now, the priority is to raise ~$5,500 (CAD) as soon as possible. These funds will go mainly to:
Buying food: the kids are severely malnourished (25kg of flour can be anywhere from $250-$500 right now)
Buying baby products: Yahya (2yo) & his baby cousin (5mo), are in desperate need of milk
finished mesohippus!! really happy with how it turned out, and learned a lot in the process. i might do more early horses in the future, really loved reconstructing that one. also, i usually I don’t go for such detailed drawings, but it was fun (me when i think that almost 17k strokes in 6,5 hours is fun…) anyway! here are some parts up close
0/63 please keep sharin imagine if this was your family especially think of the kids and mom, who relies on meds for health and to be able to function they are not optional
My mom needs her meds they are literally helping her stay well for now, shes used them for over 10 years without them she will have a flare up or something worse she has lupus, narcolepsy fibromyalgia thyroid problems her meds also help with her chronic pain and depression and shes over 60 so idk how much longer my mom has to live and this stress iskilling her i know it is. I know ppl are tired of me but i have no other choice. I’m feeding 7, 2 being kids. We need even more food due to Liu being home for a week. If ppl could just please donate or reblog, I need any help, cause I’ve given up.
No help at all for days. Forget about thanksgiving if it means keeping mom safe she is the life of our family without her there is no purpose. Please help us keep going another day. Mom NEEDS her meds as shes been out of them for 2 DAYS and is suffering from withdrawal (sleepiness, brain fog, irritation and currently a bad flare up) she needs them now. shes used them for over 10 years.
Please consider donating even a dollar is of a huge help to us. Y'all have done so much for us I know and we appreciate it all but what with the thanksgiving holiday Liu will be home for the week and we will need a lot more food as kids eat a lot. Please share and imagine if this was your family and you pathetically beg for scraps online.
please consider helping Erin out if you have funds to spare! she is an incredibly devoted caretaker and provider to her family, which includes her preteen niece (Liu) and nephew. on top of $43 for their mom’s medication, Erin needs to cover the cost of the extra food that Liu will need while she’s home and not able to get meals through school. this is a lot for Erin to handle alone, and community support is not readily available where they live. if you’re able, any support is very much appreciated ♡
There’s something very grim about Aragorn and Arwen’s love story. It adds to the poignancy, and makes it read very much as a tragic love story.
Yet the tragedy is entirely Arwen’s.
Aragorn and Arwen meet, and Arwen is seen by Aragorn as a treasure belonging to her father.
And it is her father’s terms Aragorn accepts in order to “win” her.
He succeeds, and he leads a very happy life with her, until he feels old age approach.
He then decides to end his life at will, sparing himself the onset of old age, allowing him to die while still a vision of masculinity.
Arwen clearly feels that they still have time left together, but Aragorn does not wish to go suffer infirmity and old age.
He does not want to fall from his “high seat”, he does not want to see himself “unmanned”. He wishes to evade old age are wrapped up in a desire to to die before he his kingliness and manliness is compromised.
Aragorn, being of the blood of Numenor, is able to make that choice.
He is able to go at his will, when he is ready.
And it does seem it was the right choice for him.
He dies a vision of a King among Men, his glory and grandeur never diminished.
However, in making this choice for himself, Aragorn also makes this choice for Arwen.
Arwen’s wish for Aragorn to live a while longer is tied up in her own belief that her life is not yet ended. This had a double meaning. Arwen feels she still has life yet to live, so perhaps cannot reconcile that with Aragorn accepting his life is coming to an end.
However, elves can die, or fade, from sorrow, so in choosing death for himself, and therefore sorrow for Arwen, Aragorn, if not inflicting a death sentence onto Arwen, is putting her life in peril.
She has no choice, the choice she made, between mortality and immortality, was made long ago, and she does not speak of that choice without regret.
She must now accept the Gift of Man, regardless of whether or not she wills it. She does not choose to stay now, because she will, but because her choice was made long ago, and there is no way to unmake it.
And she made this choice before she truly understood what it meant.
It’s a fascinating insight into Arwen’s head. She speaks of scorn, of judgement, she comes across as someone proud now humbled, for she judged people before she knew what it was to fear and grieve death, and now she is facing the same fate, she has to admit to her pity for them.
She made a choice to accept the Gift of Man before she knew what accepting that gift entailed, and now she has made it and it cannot be undone, she accepts it because she must.
While Aragorn dies a triumphant vision of glory and greatness, Arwen fades.
The light within her dies. She becomes cold and grey. There is a harshness about this description, she sounds a little like Eowyn did, when she was in despair “cold and stern as steel”.
She goes back to Lothlorien, where she lived happily with her kin, and dies there alone.
It is interesting that she isn’t buried or interred with Aragorn, she isn’t laid beside him as his queen, to join him in death as in life (although hopefully their souls will be reunited), but instead she is buried in the land that had once belonged to her elven kin.
Her longing to return to this place, to this time, when she still had her family about her, her wish to die not near Aragorn and by Aragorn’s children, but alone in a land that holds only memories, is poignant, and rather suggestive, because this doesn’t scream of a woman who is content with the choices she made. Clinging onto the past rather than embracing the present (she does have children, perhaps grandchildren, but that is not enough). And not just sorrowful, but cold and grey in that sorrow. Does that hint at a bit of anger there? Does that suggest more than a little regret?
Does she regret, ever so slightly, giving up her immortality, giving up ever being reunited with her father, her brothers, her mother and grandmother and all her kin and people, parted from them beyond death, for a man who chose to die and so chose for her to die, to spare himself old age and infirmity, to spare seeing himself grow unmanned and falling from his high seat.
not a being on this wretched earth i can talk to about elizabeth wein’s the winter prince… my beloved book the best depiction of psychosexual sibling relationships that i’ve ever seen in published work.. this novel has had me in its claws for years and i think about it all the time and every day i trudge beneath the sky searching for a kindred soul with which to unpick my feelings. i spent years reading every book i could find about mordred/medraut, and after finding the one that both fit and expanded my view this is my lonely reward…
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