Kitties 😭

He asked for no pickles

did you hear they're gonna start publicly executing anyone with a glimmer of hope and a light in their eyes

I mustn’t run away

The story of how I fell for this pixel chalk man is pretty funny ngl- I was writing voicelines for my OC Avalie and my best friend saw them and went 🤨 damn Albedo's voiceline seems really detailed. Cute. Is there smth going on there? (There wasn't)

And then I went huh uk what? He's not bad

And then I exploded, as one does. Now I am a full time Albedo lover 🌝

bro.... bro is so beautiful..... bro...........

The one to survive

KAEDEHARA KAZUHA ✧ Version 2.8 “Summer Fantasia” Trailer

Art by Min.K Shin

Recently, and partly for personal reasons, I've been thinking of Jo's grieving process after Beth's death in Little Women.

Namely the fact that just before Beth dies, Jo seems to have beautifully come to terms with the pending loss, but afterwards, she regresses into despair.

In Jo's poem My Beth, and in her conversation with Beth after the latter reads it, she says she realizes that she's not really losing Beth, because Beth's memory and influence will always be with her, making her a better person, and because she has faith that Beth will be watching over her in heaven. The last paragraphs of "The Valley of the Shadow" seem to set up Beth's death as sad, but not a soul-crushing tragedy, because the family has already done so much preliminary mourning, because they're relieved that her suffering is over, and because they have their precious memories of her and their religious faith to comfort them.

But then after Beth actually dies, Jo does fall into deep, soul-crushing grief and depression, which includes struggling with her religious faith, and it takes her a lot of work – through talks her parents, through her writing, and eventually by finding love with Friedrich – to finally emerge from the abyss.

I guess it shows that you're never really prepared for a loved one's death, even if you think you are.

But I suppose it's not just about Beth. It's that with Beth's death, all of the same-age companions Jo grew up with are gone. That's why the chapter of her depression is called "All Alone." Meg is married, Amy and Laurie are in Europe, and Jo may have lost Laurie's friendship (she hasn't, but she doesn't know that yet) since she rejected his marriage proposal. If they were still with her, then Beth's death might not have been so shattering. I suppose that's the book's essential, bittersweet message about growing up: siblings and friends drift apart as they all build their own separate lives (and as some die young, which was more common in the 1800s), but new relationships, i.e. spouses and children, fill the void.

(A slightly depressing message for those of us who genuinely don't want to get married or have children. As much as I like Friedrich, I almost would have liked to see an ending where Jo stays a "literary spinster," not because I think it would have been more feminist, but just because it would have shown her finding happiness with her surviving family and friends. It would emphasize that she doesn't "lose" them after all, and show that you don't need to "replace" those relationships with romance or else be lonely forever.)

But I don't think it's just about that either. Beth's death also leaves Jo without a fulfilling purpose in life. Since her writing career failed in New York after she gave up sensation stories, she made caring for Beth her life's purpose, so with Beth gone, she's aimless. She thinks she has no choice left but to "take Beth's place," as Beth urged her to do, and live a quiet, domestic life of keeping house for her parents. But while Jo does those household duties well for a while, and learns their value, she isn't content with them. It was a lovely life for Beth, but it isn't who Jo is. So beyond Jo's grief and loneliness, another cause of her depression is that she's unfulfilled. This explains why writing again, and finding literary success, is such an important part of her healing process, and why she finds her ultimate joy in the very active, un-quiet life of running a boarding school for boys.

For personal reasons, I've been feeling uneasy lately about Jo's backward swing from acceptance to depression between "The Valley of the Shadow" and "All Alone." It does feel slightly as if Alcott was saying "You may think you're ready to accept a loved one's passing, but when it actually happens it will break you." But it does help to remember that the situation is more complex than that.

@littlewomenpodcast, @thatscarletflycatcher, @fandomsarefamily1966

!! thank u so much! The way i draw lace is like…so time consuming but i usually use three different methods interchangeably

One of the major factors of lace is that it must maintain this very floral quality to it, which often relies on noticeable curves. Though a lot of lace contains straight lines here and there, the curves should always b the most significant! 

I am not too different from these cats when there's hardly a thought in my head too

These creatures are the sole focus of my life, the source of my happiness, my obsession and fixation. And they don’t even have a single thought in their heads! Here’s some fan art of my cats to honor their clueless little souls 🖤