𝐍𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐒 ;; Nikolai Lantsov

percy "i am impertinent" jackson

Have you heard of the boy who held kindness close even though anger is an option?

I have.

His eyes contained the forests that hold our life; green and nature-blessed. And, his hair remains grown, messily arranged — it contains memories, not so kind, but hopeful to the eye. The base of his cheeks are four-leaved clovers: luck, pure luck has brought him here.

I have known of him.

I have known of him. His sense of a squirrel. As they plant trees with their acorns in the soil. As he does good with anger burning in the air. As he cries, with his head upon my shoulder. Cheeks dampening the side of my shirt.

I have known.

I have known his kind smile (not forced, never forced) and I see his lips fumble, fumbling, upon the overwhelming comfort.

Stupid, stupid man. The world does not deserve his kindness, they do not deserve him, and his sense of a squirrel, and his hopeful eyes to a trivial, humane need such as comfort.

Whatever labour they have done, they brought upon this man. Of good and gold. Of nature and luck. Of peace, never-ending peace.

Of kindness over anger.

holding your hand out in front of your face and not recognizing the pattern of your palm, the grooves of your fingers, the callouses of your once work worn hands gone

gone

gone like the home in which you grew and dreamed and hoped for a future outside of only to come running back to ashes that will never reform, just a stain on the ever shifting sands and a bitter taste on your tongue

where is there time to mourn in a place such as this? when one gone shifts to another so fast you cannot tell if the air in your lungs is born of ice or forest? you count the days in gones- friends, allies, family, the very pieces of yourself falling from a metal mouth in the sky and screaming for a twin soul lost

your hand is not yours anymore, you don’t recognize the things it’s done, the ease in which it reaches for a trigger faster than the one you had before could ever signal for peace

you are gone and so is he

redemption burns hot upon your face as the world around you rebuilds and you are frozen, left clamouring for scraps of yet another gone, the arbiter of a legacy written in the stars not chosen

and with one hand weak, you carry the burden, for it is you who will be the light

you who will fight against the gone

FUCK. You know what hits hard. Luke being the first words of comfort Percy hears at camp. Sure, Chiron was with him and led him around camp, but their conversation felt more like losing hope for Percy. And then he get to Hermes' cabin and he is so ready for a fight, but instead he gets a warm welcome from Luke. AND THAT FUCKING HURTS OK.

#YES SIR I’M SAT SIR

I know it’s not much in the face of everything but I have been finding hope & resilience in palestinian poetry these past few weeks and I created a google drive file of poetry collections by palestinian poets that I will keep updating as I keep on reading. I also recommend checking out @fiercynn’s palestinian poets series for more poets + poetry available online

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

@carpecaelo how dare you hide this in the tag

Sorry, but having Zuko actually fight back against Ozai during their Agni Kai is just wrong. He was a child, only 13 at the time, afraid to fight his own father and was mutilated as punishment, because Ozai saw Zuko's begging and unwillingness to fight as unforgiveable weakness.

The Angi Kai isn't meant to be a showcase of Zuko's fighting potential (that's what the Zhao fight is for), but to show the utter cruelty of Ozai.

Molly McCully Brown, from Places I’ve Taken my Body: Essays