Sparkling Lake Monster

I know people are constantly leaving, but there are some losses I never quite manage to come to terms with. It is a strange thing. Often, these are not people I knew personally, nor even people I was especially close to. They are people I encountered for years through their books, interviews, articles, and public appearances, building a kind of imagined intimacy with them. Slavenka Drakulić has died, and she was certainly one of those people. Just like Dubravka Ugrešić. Or Mira Furlan. Sometimes I think this is the only way one can truly connect with the world: through someone’s views, ideas, thoughts, an inner world you do not know at all, yet one that resembles your own, giving you a spark of hope that you are not alone after all. That someone else thinks in a similar way and struggles to make this world we live in appear, at least for a moment, different. Better. More contemporary. More truthful.

With her distinctive combination of intellectual precision, courage, and an almost inexhaustible fascination with the everyday realities of our region, particularly in the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s collapse, she became one of Eastern Europe’s most important voices over the past several decades. She began her career as a journalist after studying comparative literature and sociology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She wrote for some of the most influential Yugoslav publications, including Start, Danas, and NIN, bringing into public discourse subjects no one else was discussing, yet which she believed deserved attention. While socialist society formally promoted equality, she was among the first to write about the actual position of women, everyday inequalities, and invisible structures of power. With her very first book, Smrtni grijesi feminizma: Ogledi o mudologiji (The Mortal Sins of Feminism: Essays on Phallology), published in 1984, she demonstrated that she was unwilling to compromise when it came to ideas. The book sparked one of the most compelling intellectual debates in Yugoslavia at the time, including a public exchange with Igor Mandić. It was the moment it became clear that a new voice had emerged on the literary and journalistic scene, one that would not merely comment on society but challenge it to profound self-examination.

During the turbulent 1990s, when nationalist ideas dominated public life, she remained fearless and steadfast in her convictions. She sharply warned of the dangers of hatred, war, and collective delusion, which often made her the target of attacks and criticism. A particularly difficult period followed a media campaign in which she, together with several other intellectuals, was branded an opponent of the dominant political narrative. The consequences were serious: her withdrawal from public life at home and her move to Sweden, where she continued to build an international career.

It was precisely this experience of exile, and her observation of post-communist Europe from a different perspective, that she transformed into acclaimed works of non-fiction such as Balkan Express and Café Europa, through which she introduced international readers to the complex processes that shaped the region after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Her writing was deeply personal, yet it always transcended the boundaries of autobiography. In the novel Holograms of Fear, written after her kidney transplant, she explored illness, vulnerability, and mortality, while in As If I Am Not There she portrayed the tragedy of wartime violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina through the story of a single woman. A special place in her later work was reserved for women who had remained in the shadow of famous men. Writing about Frida Kahlo, Dora Maar, and Mileva Einstein, she sought to illuminate their lives, talents, and sacrifices, which history had too often distorted or overlooked.

But what sets Slavenka Drakulić apart from other writers is not only the subjects she explored. It is her particular way of looking at life, one that quietly etches itself into your memory as you read. That is why I vividly remember the day I read They Would Never Hurt a Fly in a single sitting. I am usually a slow reader. Books do not grab me that easily. But this was a truly extraordinary experience. Until that moment, I had never read anything quite like it. For those unfamiliar with it, the book emerged during the prosecution of war criminals from the Bosnian war. Following trials before the Hague Tribunal, she does not attempt to prove anyone’s innocence or relativise crimes. Quite the opposite. She tries to understand how people who were once drivers, teachers, neighbours, or office workers became capable of evil. Her argument is that the greatest danger lies precisely in the fact that perpetrators are often not monsters, but entirely ordinary people. I imagine her sitting in the courtroom, observing the accused: the faces they make, the way they dress, the conversations they have with their families. She looks for signs of madness or exceptional monstrosity and finds none. Instead, she encounters the banality of evil, the idea that horrific crimes are often committed not by demons but by people who have accepted the logic of a system, propaganda, or obedience. As a literary work, the book is written almost as a series of psychological portraits. It reads like a blend of reportage, essay, and moral philosophy. There are no grand political slogans. Instead, it grapples with a far more unsettling question: if they were ordinary people, what makes us certain that we would not become the same under similar circumstances?

While others analysed grand political systems, she observed everyday life. While historians spoke about the fall of communism, she wrote about what it felt like to buy your first lipstick or wait in line for coffee. Her landmark book How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed showed the West that history is not merely a collection of dates and revolutions, but also the sum of countless small experiences lived by millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Throughout her career, she contributed to some of the world’s most respected publications, including The New York Times and The Guardian, while her books were translated into numerous languages and read around the globe. Although she received recognition during her lifetime, her work carries renewed significance today, both as a testimony to a particular era and as a lasting call for critical thought.

Opal kittens!!:3

no credit needed

One of my best friends showed my art to her little brother. Then he asked me: "You can draw every Pokémon?"

"Yes", I said shamelessly.

He proceeded to name in one go every single Pokémon he knows so far and I drew them all lol

my PMD playthrough teams ^_^

part 2/???