The Forest Mother Of Pearl Butterfly (protogoniomorpha Parhassus) | Butterfly.eden On Ig

Our Story: A Family's Journey Through War

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Donate to Help us to survive from this war, organized by ahmed Alanqar

Hello, I am Mounir Raed Al-Anqar. I am 19 years old. I was born in Gaza and live there.… ahmed Alanqar needs your support for Help us to sur

My name is Mounir, and I am part of a family of seven. We used to live a simple life in Gaza, before the war changed everything.

My father, Raed (47), my mother, Amani (39), my older sisters, Rasha (22), who is married, and Rana (21), who is also married, my brother Mohamed (16), and my little sister Sham (4), we all dreamed of a safe and stable life.

When the war began, we were forced to leave our home due to heavy shelling nearby.

We took shelter in the shop that was our only source of income— a sanitary supplies shop where my father, brother, and I worked.

We could only stay one night before leaflets were dropped from airplanes ordering a full evacuation of the area. We had no choice but to move to Al-Shifa Medical Complex, where we lived in a tent for a week.

Then, another evacuation order came, and we were told to head south of Gaza.

With no relatives to take us in, we ended up in an unfinished school building in the central area.

The 90 days we spent there were the hardest of our lives— no water, no food, and nothing fit for human life. We had to walk more than 1.5 kilometers just to buy a small amount of food to keep us alive.

After this long ordeal, another evacuation order came, but before we could leave, the school was bombed.

It was terrifying— we narrowly escaped death, leaving everything behind.

We fled to Rafah, a place that seemed safer at first, but there too, we found no shelter.

We had to live in a tent, in the freezing winter cold.

We had no way to keep warm, and we nearly froze to death.

My mother, who suffers from chronic asthma, was in a dire situation because we couldn’t find her medications.

She ran out of the medicine that helps her breathe, and she started having painful attacks.

This is one of the many types of medicine that you use, but there is none of it because it has run out

The smoke from the fire we used for cooking and the terrible smell from the lack of sanitation in the school made her condition worse.

My little sister Sham is also suffering from skin rashes due to the unsanitary conditions, and she has diarrhea and vomiting because the drinking water is contaminated.

We are living in inhumane conditions, and we don’t even have the clothes we need to survive the coming winter.🥶(🧥❌)

My brother Mohamed and I carry a heavy burden— we fetch water from faraway places, and we search for food to ease our hunger.

My married sisters and their small children are also in desperate need of baby formula, clothes, and diapers.

Even the food that reaches us in the school from charity kitchens is barely edible due to poor cooking.🤢

This is our life… fear, hunger, cold, and bombing. 💔

We live in constant terror and uncertainty. 😔💔

We desperately need your help and support— any donation can help save our lives and ease our suffering.🥺🙏🏻

gofundme.com

Donate to Help us to survive from this war, organized by ahmed Alanqar

Hello, I am Mounir Raed Al-Anqar. I am 19 years old. I was born in Gaza and live there.… ahmed Alanqar needs your support for Help us to sur

My campaign is Vetted by

@gazavetters , my number verified on the ( list #8 )

The moment where he calculates.

(Source)

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

characters who suffer the most tragic fates not because they were destined to die but because they were doomed to survive

How i look when I see a loud noise

We were never the minimalist 🇩🇿✨

📸© :manuella_for_your_event

What I am about to write, Madam, may shock you no end. However, I am determined to lay bare before you a confession - my own - and to describe in detail the terrible crime I have committed.

Edogawa Ranpo, “The Human Chair” from Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination

I'd like to bring to attention another fundraiser which also really needs your support, and it's that of the Abushammala family. This is a family which has been separated due to the war. Amal is trying to get her family out of Gaza to reunite with her.

In the past few months, everything which is familiar to them, their home, their streets, their neighborhood, has been demolished. They've had to evacuate and have been on the run, struggling to find healthy food and clean water. And through all this, her family has persevered and shown their resilience, even as the occupation has been bombing them and cutting access to food and water.

You can see Amal's 2 sisters, Tala and Eman, in the video linked below talking about their family's situation and requesting your help.

Tumblr

‼️ Urgent Plea: Help Evacuate My Family from Gaza!

My heart is heavy as I write this urgent plea. My family in Gaza is facing unimaginable danger, and I'm desperate to get them to safety. The

They will need to raise funds in order to not only cross the border, but relocation fees and living expenses. They still need your support. Their fundraiser is nearly €8000 off of their goal.

gofundme.com

Donate to Urgent: Help Evacuate My Family From Gaza War, organized by Amal Abushammala

My name is Amal Abu Shammala, I am a licensed Palestinian architect bas… Amal Abushammala needs your support for Urgent: Help Evacuate My Fa

And you can find Amal's tumblr @amalisam where she's posting about her family's situation and updates about the fundraiser.

how am i supposed to go to work when im literally thinking about The Character