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love seeing the beginnings of perseus "pay your fucking child support" jackson's crusade against the gods' parental negligence problem in ep 1 & 2 of the pjo show. the absolute KING of "my daddy gave me issues so HE'S about to HAVE issues"

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So usually when an imaginary friend is a real thing in a story, itā€™s either a demon or a ghost or some supernatural boogeyman that probably wants to eat the kid theyā€™ve befriended (Mama, a couple of the Paranormal Activity movies), or ā€œimaginary friendsā€ are just treated as a real thing in the setting, and if a child just thinks hard enough they can manifest a friend into existence (Fosterā€™s Home for Imaginary Friends, Happy).

And somewhere in the middle is an area where the imaginary friend in question is real and they are supernatural, but they arenā€™t malevolent, and they arenā€™t entirely honest about what they are. Like maybe theyā€™re a fairy or a god or some kind of boggle from mythology, but they just got caught by a six year old and they donā€™t have time to get into it, so they just go ā€œā€¦Yes. Iā€™m your imaginary friend. We havenā€™t met. How do you do.ā€ And then they stick around because they do love this kid, and if youā€™re a boggle from mythology in the modern day good food is really hard to come by.

And at some level. Thatā€™s what I think Hobbes is.

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[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled "immortalityā€ after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as ā€œdo not stand at my grave and weepā€). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, ā€œdo not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.ā€ page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, ā€œi am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.ā€ the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, ā€œwhen you awaken in the morningā€™s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.ā€ the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, ā€œi am not there. i did not dieā€ / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my schoolā€™s comic anthology. the theme was ā€œevolutionā€

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Reminder that the US bombed Iraq a day ago. Reminder that this attack has killed 16 Iraqis, many of whom were civilians. Reminder that Iraq has already suffered enough at the hands of US imperialism, that to this day itā€™s recovering from the aftermath of being defamed to the world as terrorists, from its cities being destroyed under the guise of ā€œexterminating ISISā€ (an echo of Israel decimating Palestine to ā€œexterminate Hamas,ā€ interesting), that the US has so many ulterior motives to continue encroaching upon Iraq that have nothing to do with their seemingly noble rationale, and that it does all this while funding Israelā€™s ongoing genocide of Palestinians (which are basically doing their dirty work of pushing further in on Arab territory). Itā€™s jarring that this is all happening on a world stage & yet nothing is being done to stop it. Hands off Iraq. Free Palestine. Hands off Iraq. Free Palestine.

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One of my favourite mundane weirdnesses about Edinburgh is that we set the big clock visible approaching the station to be 3 minutes fast to make sure people are on time for their trains. My Favourite mundane weirdness of Edinburgh is that we check this by firing a cannon.

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Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.

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