another thing i tend to think about with this. i also just think in chapter 5 there's a theme of care and dependency. the flowers have extreme guilt over being taken care of by asgore. flowery conceptualizes himself as weak and useless. in the dark world, his fantasy, he tries to return the care given to him to asgore to "make up for" asgore taking care of him when he should've died decades ago. it's an extreme example, but i also resonate with his feeling.

when your body or mind puts you in a situation where your reliance on other people becomes really explicit, you're trained by the world to see that as shameful or to see yourself as deficient. your efforts to ignore your needs just to avoid "being a burden," will leave you worse off. you punish yourself because of deeply internalized ableism.

regardless, even by virtue of being a living thing on this planet, you are already designed to need others. you have to listen to your body's needs even against a society that teaches you you shouldn't. you have to be okay with the fact that you have needs. sometimes your needs are different or are greater than the person next to you, and all you can do is listen to your body and turn to others when you need them. you're still a person when you need people.

when toby says this:

it's interesting to me how much he uses the language of deltarune to express this feeling. your hopes and dreams slipping away, and bitterness growing is literally the explanation we get for shadow crystals (and so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. it looked like glass). this is also the crushing feeling when you lose a sense of control when you're in pain, when you can't do things the way you want, the way you used to. but when you find yourself still able to fly, you do so because you've adapted. you've listened to your body. you've learned that listening to your body means changing the pace, letting yourself be cared for, letting yourself be helped.

some  info:

The country they are currently immigrated to does not allow mutual aid, so this will be our only opportunity to crowdfund. S’ brother, L, is returning home for a week to arrange paperwork for their mother. Once he leaves, I will remove this fundraiser for S and her brother’s safety. Thank you so, so much.

Hello everyone, I am posting this on behalf of my three cousins, who are requesting mutual aid from the people online in more fortunate circumstances. They are three immigrant workers from the global south and medical refugees in a country in West Asia. Currently, my cousin S is fighting stage 4 breast cancer, and due to a deeply upsetting and misogynistic situation, she, alongside her brother and sister, all working class, were forced out of the home they were staying at. 

My aunt recently had the opportunity to come and help S with her illness; Unfortunately, while there, she suffered two heart attacks. I am gathering funds to support S in three ways. First is to extend our aunt's visa as she is in no condition to return home. Second is to alleviate their food and housing insecurity, as their combined income is eaten away by S’ cancer treatments and rent. Third is to pad their emergency funds, as S’ chemotherapy is unavailable in our home country and only available in where they are currently immigrated to.  Again, we are so grateful beyond words for all the help!!

Visa: 1,000 usd

Rent and food alleviation: 500 usd

Emergency funds: 200 usd, anything extra we receive.

article: “I suspect that a bit of the steam has gone out of the LGBT thing,” Backman told the right-wing outlet, staying ahead of the issue. “There may be the odd protester, but if they have got armies of PR people laser-focused on that then I suspect it may be OK.”

me: no surprises there... fuck them

sandwich recipe

Hind Rajab Foundation against legal impunity

Gaza Medical Tent Project

One Heart Volunteer Team Drop of Life Water Campaign

Dahnoun Mutual Aid

Mawasi al-Qarara Mutual Aid

The Sameer Project for North Gaza Aid

Sameer Project's South Gaza Aid

Medical Campaign x Sameer Project

Team Hussain's Grassroots Aid Campaign

The Mohammed Project's Aid Campaign

Abu Hureirah Aid Network for Sudan and Palestine

Ihyaa's Mission for Students in Gaza

Official Gaza City Water Fund

Official Gaza City Campaign for Prosthetic Limbs for the Children of Gaza

Emergency Water Relief for Gaza City

Water Fund for Khan Younis Camp

Revive Gaza's Farmland Initiative

Ihyaa Initiative: Support Students in Gaza

People's Front For The Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Fundraiser

Lifeline4Gaza - vetted family fundraisers

Donate to direct action and gaza municipality and watch your money go to the best cause - if we can be anything we should be efficient. The most effective money you can give is to direct action, to group movements to protect our insurgents from adventurism, to Gazan medical tent for emergency medical relief, to providing water and food for Gaza through grassroots campaigns such as the PFLP's and mutual aid projects, and to Gaza municipality for their infrastructure. These crucial resources for maintaining life remain underfunded. Support BDS however you can against Carrefour, HP, Puma and Siemens. Share the following toolkit with your union and movement:

-Don’t use “buy now pay later.” The fine print isn’t what it seems.

-The fine print on medical financing, store credit cards, and contactless payment is also not what it seems.

-Payday loans are still predatory, even when offered by your employer

-Rewards programs are an income stream for the companies that run them. The points systems are manipulated so that the house always wins. They depend on people leaving money in rewards accounts and not in interest-bearing traditional bank accounts.

-Electronic payment apps like VenMo are not banks. You don’t earn interest. Your money is not protected.

-Your financial information is not private if your money is not kept in a regulated bank.

-None of this is regulated by the FDIC. Your money is not protected if it is held by a non-bank doing banking business. Our economy is not protected from the collapse of financial institutions that are not banks.

 A third of younger Americans hold their savings on nonbank tech platforms like Venmo

PEOPLE! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MONEY IN VENMO OR APPLE PAY OR ANY OF THIS SHIT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GO FIND A REAL BANK OR A CREDIT UNION.

If Venmo were to close tomorrow all your money would vanish. There's no insurance or guarantee on any of these things. I know banks aren't great but legit banks will have the "FDIC insured" logo on their doors and websites, which means if my bank goes under tomorrow I still get my money back. Also I guarantee you there is a credit union somewhere in your town, go find it.

your funds are insured up to $250,000 by the FDIC in the event Green Dot Bank fails

In the event Green Dot Bank fails. Meaning the only time your money is protected is if Green Dot goes under. Not if Apple goes under (unlikely, granted). Or if Apple changes its terms (entirely possible). Or if you got scammed. Or if Apple freezes your account because they think you're the one scamming. Or any of the other countless mishaps your money could suffer. Green Dot is insured, but Apple Cash is not.

This is the disclaimer (highlighted) you see before you set up Apple Cash:

For the love of god get an account at a federally insured institution. Look for FDIC (banks) or NCUA (credit unions) insured and regulated financial institution. They are legally required to have this status publicly available and accessible so it's not hard to find.

The FDIC and/or NCUA will insure your accounts up to $250,000 PER AUTHORIZED SIGNER and per account type. These are factors to max your coverage to even higher than $250k but the key point is that if something happens to your bank or accounts there, that first $250k of your money is secured anyway.

Banks are for profit. Credit Unions are exactly what it sounds like: unions. They are not for profit and member owned.

Bigger institutions have more money and resources at their disposal; they have the fancier apps, 24/7 phone banking and more locations. But watch out! They are no different than any other large corporation you've heard of when it comes to ethics. Smaller institutions have more limitations, and lesser size is not an indicator of morality, but it's something to consider when choosing where to keep your money.

These institutions, regardless of what kind you choose, will offer interest bearing accounts. Money Market Savings and Time Accounts (also called Certificates of Deposit,) are popular choices to put the money you already have to work for you. You can earn money just for having your money in an interest bearing account type.

All financial institutions charge fees of one sort or another. They are offering products and services, after all. Nothing is free! They will also disclose options to avoid paying those fees, usually based around meeting specific criteria such as minimum balances or direct deposits.

Please help Mustafa

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #605 )✅️

Not because he had lost hope in life, but because he could hear the final breaths of his last daughter beneath the debris. Her tiny hands were holding his in the darkness, as if she were seeking comfort from him one last time. Yet the father, who had always believed he was their source of safety, was this time powerless to pull them out from beneath the dust and stones.

Nothing of his body was visible except his head. He stared into the faces of the rescuers with eyes exhausted by fear and helplessness, saying to them

“Leave me... my daughters are here. I do not want to come out alone.”

What heart can bear such a scene? What language can describe the feeling of a father who realizes he is losing his daughters one by one, while still holding their hands until they grow cold, unable to offer them rescue or even one final embrace?

How will your day continue after hearing this story? How will you sit at your table in peace, or laugh at something trivial, knowing that there was a father whose final wish was not to survive alone?

And the question that continues to haunt the human conscience remains:

How much pain does it take for the world to hear the cry of a single father there?

Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:

transparency about the country of origin for cocoa

if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)

if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")

[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]

So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)

About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)

Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.

If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:

First, it’s worth noting that slavefreechocolate.org doesn’t really have a defined metric for grading companies for being slave-free — it’s more of a blog operated by a grassroots organization seeking to draw attention to the prevalence of modern slavery in the chocolate industry. To be clear, that’s a noble goal for them to be doing, but a bad grade from them is also less of a big deal than a lot of folks might realize: they specifically removed Tony’s for collaborating with notoriously-exploitative chocolate company Barry Callebut to source cocoa, but Tony’s themselves have remained critical of Callebut for the same reasons despite their partnership, and insists that its collaboration with Callebut is designed to operate alongside Callebut’s own pipeline instead of drawing from it, basically as way of showing how to ethically use the currently-existing framework on an international scale. Here’s a press release from Tony’s on the subject, though obviously you should always be a little skeptical of press releases.

Similarly, the claim about “Tony’s revealed in 2022 that they had 1701 child laborers in their supply chain” is true… because one of the company’s stated goals is transparency, and they regularly publish results detailing the failings they’ve found within their own pipeline, and the ways that they’ve rectified it. The chocolate industry is rife with exploitation and abuse, and that can’t just be undone overnight: instead, it is important for companies to be willing to take responsibility for their actions and the actions of their suppliers, which Tony’s does. (Here’s a good John Oliver video about chocolate to help explain why it’s so hard to fix a lot of the exploitation in the industry.)

So yes, Tony’s has some problems with it. Most chocolate does, in fact. But unlike what a lot of comments on this post are saying, Tony’s isn’t being hypocritical: they’re doing exactly what they promised they’d do, by openly discussing the problems with the system and finding ways to rectify those issues for the future. They’re still the second-rated chocolate company on the Chocolate Scorecard (which does actually have a metric for its ratings), which recently raised the bar for its scoring by ranking corporate promises far lower than their actual successes.