YOU ARE NOT ALONE

An elephant tries to save what it thinks is a drowning human

Even when you aren't present, the good you bring to the world will be spread by others.

Toxic Masculinity is the idea that your concept of what it is to be a man is actively detrimental to your own health. Toxic Masculinity is the idea you have to live up to an impossible standard, a standard that is DELIBERATELY impossible, so that you tear yourself apart trying to meet it. This makes you more exploitable.

Kindness is sharing your idea of what it is to be a man in a way that heals others.

friendship is not romance, but it is passionate. There's nothing wrong with loving your friends.

Courage is not the absence of danger. Courage is not the absence of fear.

Courage is to feel the fear. To embrace it. To let it wash over you. And when it is done, you will be what remains, not the fear, and it can no longer hold you back.

A hero can be anyone. Even someone doing something as simple as offering water to someone who needs help to drink it.

Memories are the means by which we remain immortal. Though memories may be flawed, or fragile, they also ensure we can live on. As long as there is a memory, no matter what form it takes, what is remembered has never died.

"Do whatever you want with my music, just don't make me boring."

Consider this:

These animals are not human. They are not part of our species.

They are also disabled, without assistance they will die because they can't get access to food the same way their non-disabled competitors can

So what do we do? We build them wheelchairs and take care of them. Life recognizes life. Life cares for life.

a scam is when you pay expecting a service in return. Helping someone else is never a scam.

Everyone fails and trying to be who they're "supposed" to be. No one fails at being who they ARE.

Men love. Men are affectionate. Men are compassionate. Men are empathetic. Men are emotional. Men are concerned. Men are caring. Men are passionate. Men are peaceful. Society tells you a man is hard, emotionless, strong, and violent. This is a lie designed to make you hurt so that you will be vulnerable for exploitation.

Men are just like Women. They're human.

A lady had this Garfield plush for 40 years. She loved it so much the white of his eyes rubbed off so now it looks like he's contently purring.

Change is not inherently bad. And just because you look different doesn't mean you are worse for it.

If you don't love yourself, you literally can't have a healthy love of someone else. Now do not misunderstand me, you can become better, you can ALWAYS improve. But you can't KNOW, you can't have INTERNALIZED, love if you don't even know how to love yourself. That doesn't mean you have to like everything about yourself, it means you have to find within yourself who you are, not who the world says you should be. Because who the world says you should be is a lie, there's no one you CAN be...except you.

There's an idea in popular culture called "Great Man History," it's the idea that, say, Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. In reality, hundreds of employees invented the lightbulb, and Edison took credit for it. The truth of reality is that the famous person you've heard about didn't do anything. The people who did all the work are people like you, people society says are "unimportant" because to admit how important you are would undermine capitalism's ability to hurt you.

You can do it! You're not down and out yet!

The orphan grinder allows homelessness to exist to scare the peons into servitude.

That doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to fight the orphan grinder. This man can't help every homeless person. Hell he can't even help most homeless people. That doesn't matter.

He can help one person in need. That's all you need to do in life.

Even in the darkest black, a single tiny light shines brightly

Society says failure is always our fault, the fault of the person who tried and now is suffering for it. This is bullshit. It's literally never your fault you failed, and failure means NOTHING to your worth as a person. The more you look into why you failed the more you'll see this. It's almost always the fault of circumstances more complicated than just "you failed"

They mean "find" not "fund" a gurdwara. They may not have daily meals, but they all have a Sunday meal guaranteed (and local ones may do more). Gurdwara are Sikh temples, you can google maps them for locations near you.

impermanence is the fundamental state of life. Who you are today is not who you were five, ten, fifteen years ago. That does not make your experiences now or then any less valuable

Just because the world is run on orphan grinding machines doesn't mean that kindness and help with no expectation of reward ceases to exist.

I think this one is important to remember. Ke$ha released "Die Young" while she was being abused and preyed upon by Dr Luke, a serial bastard and scumbag. In many ways the song is a terrible reminder of how she was forced to live a lie in every way. And yet...the song has found a life of its own as a source of hope and inspiration for millions of people. In the same way as "Seven Nation Army" of "We Will Rock You" it has grown a life of its own, uniting thousands of people together under a common banner where they can celebrate themselves as one people, together.

"Your story may not have such a happy beginning. But that doesn't make you who you are. It is the REST of your story. Who you CHOOSE to be."

as important as it is to care about other people, it's also important to realize when other people are exploiting your concern for their well being to your own detriment.

What is normal? Is brown hair normal? Does that make everyone with blonde or red or black hair not normal? are blue eyes normal? red skin? And the more criteria you include at once, the fewer people it applies to! There's no such thing as "normal", just like "Common Sense" it's a thing people just say to justify or excuse things. In reality, the only "normalcy" is exceptionality, and everyone, by definition, is exceptional. You are all a unique collection of...everything, really. Atoms, genes, personality traits, experiences, it's all unique to you.

Punk is looking at the system and saying "this is broken and needs fixing". Punk is kindness, it's helping the oppressed. It's no coincidence that punk was associated with violence historically, because history is written by the establishment, and Punk came about at a time when the establishment was, as always, oppressing non whites. To the establishment, punk is a threat to their ability to oppress the needy and the innocent, so it's been categorized as violent and unruly.

Violent and unruly for the crime of saying "You're hurting these people and you need to stop"

The delusion that "It wasn't trauma cuz it wasn't as bad as [insert bullshit example here]" is what's known as an "appeal to worse problems fallacy". It's an illogical and delusional claim, but it sounds appealing without in depth consideration which is why it's so often used. You may also hear this fallacy under the guise of "the lesser evil", "well sure X is bad, but it's the lesser evil compared to Y!"

In both cases, that's a lie. X is bad. It's not magically less bad because you can think of a worse example.

No matter what year it is, this is always true. You are not born to suffer through life and die. Other people can cheer about their incredible deeds...those deeds are not a reflection on you in any way. You are not inferior simply because you didn't do what someone else did.

"there are things in life you can't fight, acts of god. You see a hurricane coming you get out of the way. But in a Jaeger...you can fight the hurricane. You can win"

It seems like a joke, but no, literally all four of these things are important to remember. There may come a time when society says you're wrong to do something necessary for you to survive, and in that time it's important to remember that just because everyone says one thing that doesn't make it true.

"nothing is true, everything is permitted". Nothing is true because no observer is truly objective. Your own experiences naturally colour what you're seeing. This is why witness testimony is so unreliable. "Everything is permitted" because the only rules that matter are the ones that can be enforced. If no one will enforce a rule, it isn't actually a rule, even if someone wrote it down.

To the people who matter, the things you think are huge failings are no big deal. They see the truth of who you are. Maybe it's blood relation. Maybe it's friends. Maybe it's someone you've never met online. They see the truth of who you are and understand.

As a recommendation: If you want to get a gun but aren't sure about it, check out Biofire's Smart Gun. It's basically a gun and a gun safe built into one, no one can fire it without your authorization.

You can also check out Bass Pro Shops, as a national chain you're less likely to run into some trump nutter butter trying to get you in on his bitcoin scam and handing you infowars flyers, since that kinda shit will reflect badly on a national company and they're more likely to shitcan people who are overtly weird. People there will walk you through the process more than your local gun store will for a first-time buyer.

If you still don't feel comfortable around guns but want to protect people/yourself: check out "plate carriers", you can get one for as little as 50 bucks on amazon, safariland, ARMA (the company, not the video game), or AR500 (the company, not the sheet steel). You'll need to buy plates to put in it though.

When buying ballistic plates (i.e. the "bulletproof" in "bulletproof vest") you want NIJ 3 or NIJ 4. NIJ 3 will shrug off a couple rifle hits, NIJ4 is military grade body armor. NIJ2 (or "Soft armor" you may hear it called) will only stop pistol rounds and is generally not recommended for actual protection. NIJ 3A is a scam (internally 3A plates are 3 loose sheets of kevlar and some packing foam) , NIJ 3+ is basically NIJ4 quality rejects (NIJ 3+ is made of the same stuff as NIJ 4, making it just as heavy, but with less protection). I used to manufacture ballistic plates personally, this is how I know what the inside of them looks like.

Also you can look into getting a shield. Ballistic (not riot, you want ballistic) shields are for sale and will shrug off bullets. You can buy them for about the same price as a firearm. Do not buy riot shields, riot shields are plastic designed to shrug off rioters throwing rocks and using sticks to swing at you. Ballistic shields stop bullets.

If you can't afford any of that, go to home depot, buy some door handles, then go to a local sheet steel supplier (you can find them on google) and buy a sheet of 410 stainless steel in 0.125in thickness, you want a square 2ft x 2ft, should cost about 30 bucks. Now drill holes in the sheet and screw your door handles on. Tada you've got a shield that will shrug off most pistol caliber rounds and will protect you from rubber bullets and tear gas cannisters being fired at you. Buy them for all your friends, they will help keep you safe.

Also you can buy military-grade ballistic helmets at military surplus stores or online. Make sure you're getting an NIJ rated helmet, not a "bump helmet". Most ballistic helmets are rated NIJ3A for weight reasons, this is good enough to protect your head from glancing threats like shrapnel or small caliber rounds. It'll hurt and concuss you but you'll live with a ballistic helmet on.

Just because society says your skills are "useless" and "nerdy" doesn't mean they don't have value in a wide variety of situations.

Crows know you, they know what you do, they know that you like shiny things and they want to help you to help them. Life knows Life.

Never forget, for every "great man" there were hundreds, thousands, millions lifting them up. All those "self made men" only got where they were because of the help of others.

You are not crazy to look at reality and realize it does not line up with what every news source and authority figure is telling you. You are not crazy to realize that you are being lied to. You are not crazy to recognize that a system of funneling money in to the hands of an unelected or dubiously elected minority of the global population is unsustainable. You are not crazy to recognize that people with money are actively trying to harm you for the "crime" of being less wealthy than them. You are not crazy to look around and ask "why, in these countries with such wealth, is homelessness and poverty allowed to exist?" to realize that any system where a decision is made that affects you, but without your say in it, is an unfair system.

No one asked to be born, you were not born simply to die, no matter what Agent Smith says.

No Man Is An Island. Ever notice how even in fairy tales, when a baby is born and abandoned, it's still raised by something, like animals? That's because a baby with no one, is dead. If you're reading this, you were raised by people, you were built by the help of others. Maybe those people were assholes, and from them you learned what an asshole is so you know not to be one. Maybe those people were kind, and from them you learned how to be kind to others. The end result is the same: you are never alone. You walk the streets built by others, you breathe the air cleaned by others, you buy and eat food grown by others. Humanity exists because we stand together, no matter how much assholes may try and convince you you're alone.

Dog wants to ride with his family in the ambulance

from a post here on imgur by MadameRainbowPants :)

love only takes seeing the beauty and warmth in a situation. like seeing the legacy your beloved daughter left after she passed, in her daughter

an apt metaphor, because we are not made of metal but of meat. We are made of fragile and mutable little cells that don't even have the benefit of a cell wall to protect them, and as a result things can get a little lopsided, a little off balance, just through basic operation. Thus, the needs we have are dynamic, we cannot live on one thing alone, and it's ok if today you need a little bit more of something you don't need at all on other days

Malena died in 2021, 28 years after she was injured. She lived almost three decades because an entirely different species was there to help her

1/2

2/2 chaotic good means ignoring the rules if it does the most good

No matter what you might think, no matter what other people might tell you, the things you make are good. Even a lump of black clay can be good, if it was something you made.

It doesn't have to be automatically perfect. perfection is impossible. Improvement is the only truth in the world.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RousseauWasRight

You don't have to solve the whole problem in front of you in one go. Just solve one tiny part of it. And then solve the next tiny part. And the next

You don't always have to be doing things for "the right" reasons to be doing good things. Sometimes just doing something good is enough to contribute to positivity in the world :)

You should never be ashamed of your happiness, and you shouldn't fill your life with people who shame you for your happiness. Stuffed animals are great, especially for cuddles. Source: 6'5", 235lb 30 year old man.

Some of you have pain that comes from people like this. People society told you to trust and listen to unquestioningly, the worst kind of people. I know because I grew up with a stepfather like this. The first step to healing is realizing the things you were told by society are bullshit. You are not a failure because you couldn't live up to the standards of someone who was too insecure to admit their failings to a child.

There's no shame in missing a person who hurt you. It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you lesser. The important step to healing is recongizing that those feelings come from a place of manipulation, they are a symptom of the trauma you suffered. As much as people hurt you those abusers also needed you to need them. You don't have to listen to those urges. And the less you listen they quieter they'll become :) I know from experience. My stepdad was abusive, and my entire family is still recovering from it. My ex girlfriend was abusive, and it left me with a lot of negative behaviors that caused me to hurt people in turn. It wasn't till I met my wife that I properly began to heal, because she was there to show me a better way. And now I'm here to show you a better way too :) And together we can pass it on to others to help them heal.

Abandoned as a pup

He was found by Muriel.

And he repaid her kindness every day by saving her life. Despite how he was afraid of everything.

We are star stuff, the debris of celestial life

Everybody needs a break sometimes. It doesn't mean they hate you, or that you hate them.

"True nobility is not being superior to your fellow men, but to your former self"

The greatest strength we can have as people is to recognize when we have made mistakes and apologize, and when we are in the right and to stand firm.

No matter how much you're making at work I can safely say with 100% certainty that you deserve more. Workers all deserve more money, as profit is literally theft of your labor's value.

The things you do that you think are embarrassing aren't necessarily so cringe to other people.

all thinking you aren't attractive means is that you're less likely to fuck your own clone.

"the tighter you squeeze the more star systems will slip through your fingers"

Planned Parenthood, no matter how much republicans fight, will always be there for us. And we will be there for them.

John Custer was just a regular man. He got drafted into the US military during Vietnam, he fought tooth and nail to survive a war he admitted was stupid and pointless. He fought tooth and nail to get his friends through it too. Even fragged a sergeant for deliberately trying to get them all killed. He came home and met a hippie girl, and fell in love with her immediately.

They had a son. At five years old they had been captured by a family of christian zealots, and they swore they'd leave. Before they set out to escape John gave his son this advice.

Advice was the only thing that would escape, as John was captured and murdered that night.

But this message stuck with Jesse Custer, his son, through all of his life. It stuck with him and it taught him one undeniable good lesson. You have to stand up to the bad in the world, to be its antithesis, to be the good. And that message outlived John, it outlived his wife, it outlived GOD HIMSELF (yes really, God dies in Preacher). And it caused the downfall of literal fascists, the dismantling of an entire conspiracy to control the world, and prevented a literal apocalypse.

All because one man told his son to be a good person, to help others, and he took that to heart.

The words we say have power. More power than God himself.

the reason people like you is not because of what they remember of you, it's because of who you are. They don't need to remember you're worthy for you to be worthy, and the things that they like about you will still attract them to you no matter whether they remember you or not :)

In real life people care about each other and will work to save each other, even if they fight or yell or disagree.

and remember: creation does not have to be "good". if Jackson Pollock can get famous for jizzing paint onto a canvas you have no requirement or expectation that how you choose to make things must live up to some arbitrary social standard of quality. Even a black lump of clay can be the creation necessary to relieve yourself of your unfair burdens.

No matter how bad the injuries, as long as you're still alive you can still heal and become full again. You have the love of others, you can heal, and we are all here to help you do it :)

A lot of people misunderstand this one. It's not suggesting that you need to die to protect your loved ones.

It's saying "Fuck Around and Find Out" to people who hate

So much of what society demands of us is inherently exploitative. The idea that you have to always be giving your all at everything you do, that you have to do everything perfectly, this ideology is designed to make you exploitable. It's designed to wring the maximum productivity from you as a worker. It's not based in reality.

In reality you are not perfect, and that's normal. You don't have to do everything perfectly. Doing it at all, no matter how poorly, is good enough. YOU are good enough, no matter how much society tells you you're a failure, you're not.

If you have the power to help other people it is your duty, your responsibility, as a human being to do so.

Who you were becomes who you are, no matter what. But who you were will ensure that who you become remembers what's important, no matter how impossible it might become for you to do so

The internet means you will never again have to worry about being alone. Just by reading this, you are interacting

TRIGGER WARNING RAPE IN THE NEXT IMAGE

Y'all may remember this woman as the "not today motherfucker!" T shirt lady. This is the post she made soon after it happened.

We are not omnipresent. We can't be everywhere at once, hell we can't even be in two places at once. But we can still help others by giving them the tools to protect themselves when we can't be there to protect them. thanks to Fighting Chance Seattle she was able to help herself when no one was around to help her.

Even if you feel useless, the thing you share to others can be the difference between life and death for them, whether you realize it or not.

END TRIGGER WARNING

If you're reading this, you are by definition not alone. You're on imgur. We're all here with you :)

Whatever voice tells you you're alone...whatever the reason is that that voice was born...it's wrong. You are not alone. You have value. We want to hear your value. To see you find it. To see you grow :)

It can be hard to make the changes you know you need to make in life, but we're all behind you 110%

treating depression by saying "just be happy" doesn't work. Treating depression by being reminded there are people out there who wanna share an ice cream and apple pie with you does :)

"No one is an island". No matter how alone you feel there are those willing to stand by you and protect you from the things you aren't strong enough to withstand alone :)

You gotta be willing to accept the truth, that you are loved, that people do care about you, that you are not alone.

1175 apps running on a computer. Is it alive? Can thousands or millions of individual things coming together as one be called alive? Be said to have value? To be worth caring about? To be able to care about others?

We've never met. We probably never will. But we're all behind you 100%, all you need to do is ask :)

Shirou was 5 when his world ended. A huge fire consumed his birth parents and his entire neighborhood. Wandering among the flames he collapsed. He should have died. But a man. A man who had lost everything. Who wanted a sign, any sign of hope, found him. And put into him Avalon: The Sheathe of Excalibur. A holy relic capable of healing any injury. It saved his life but cursed him. It overwrote his very nature, until his very being became defined by forging swords alone atop a hill of blades. But because of this curse, he was able to call forth Artoria: The Once and Future King. She saved his life from being killed by an assassin. She fought for him as his champion. Until finally their contract was broken without her consent or his. They were separated.

But even separated, he was not alone.

He was beaten down by a future version of himself (white hair), a version that had seen the very ideals he held as a child falter in the face of reality. A Hero for Justice became just a murderer seeking to kill one person to save two, one hundred to save a thousand. Became hollow and empty. Burned out his very body, bleaching his hair, as he cast his magic beyond the limits of his body just to save more people than he killed, and failed in the process. Until he craved so totally for death that he sought to kill his past self so he never even existed.

That is the truth of his incantation, this future version of Emiya Shirou known only as "Archer".

"I am the bone of my sword.
Steel is my body, and Fire is my blood
Unknown to life
Nor Known to death
The bearer of this curse stands alone
Forging steel atop a hill of blades"

But even beaten, broken, bloody, his spirit crushed by this harsh reality from his apparent certain future, Shirou was not alone.

The gifts and compassion and friendship along the way combined to give him the strength to stand. To look at the truth of the world and say "I will not give up even though I know it's hopeless. If nothing I do matters, then all that matters is what I choose!"

Shirou need not forge steel alone atop a hill of blades.

For he had Artoria

And Rin

And the hopes and dreams of an adopted father who saved his life as a child, Kiritsugu

The love of a sister who'd never known her brother, Illyasviel

The respect of the Monster cursed for her existence, Medusa

The friendship of Ireland's Undefeatable Child of Light, Cu Chulainn

No matter how alone you feel. No matter how much your every being tells you you are alone. You are not. You are the hopes and dreams of everyone around you.

Thanksgiving is an illusion. You are not any lesser because you chose to not deal with a bunch of toxic bullshit today and stress out about overeating or whatever. Sometimes the best holiday is the one where everyone who cares about you lets you do what you need for your own mental well being, even if that's spending a little time wrapped up in a blanket with nothing to worry about :)

A man without the usual faculties for communication. An animal that lacks any of what a human would typically use to communicate. Even with that larger than normal barrier, they can speak to one another and be understood. Because all life can speak to all life. We just have to realize how :)

Even aliens who power themselves off literal sunlight need therapy sometimes. These are all true things, even if you don't believe them yourself.

Inosculation is a natural phenomenon in which parts of two different trees, commonly but not exclusively the same species, grow together, self grafting and sharing nutrients

The term emanates from latin- ōsculārī, to kiss

Despite having no roots, this thin tree that was cut down has effectively been adopted by the larger one, who shares its roots with the cut down tree, while the cut down tree shares its leaves with the larger one.

One day, Falguni Devi was bringing her husband his lunch along a treacherous mountain pass, the only route from her village to their neighbor, when she slipped and fell. The nearest doctor required a 2 day journey around the mountain to get from village to village. Her husband, Dashrath Manjhi, went to get help from the nearest doctor, but the four day round trip meant Devi was dead by the time a doctor returned.

Manjhi passed away in 2007. He died knowing he had spent his life ensuring that no one in his village would ever feel the pain he had. No one in his village would ever suffer helpless as their loved ones died because they couldn't get to a doctor in time.

For 22 years, from 1960 to 1982, he smashed the mountain apart with nothing but a hammer and a chisel he either made himself or were donated by his fellow villagers. He carved a 110m x 7m x9m road through the mountain directly, reducing the trip between neighboring villages from 55km to 8km, and the trip to the nearest doctor from 90km to 43km.

Manjhi was born to the lowest caste in the hindu system, btw. Illiterate he ran away from home in hopes of finding a better life for himself, but ended up a day laborer struggling to live in a poor village. "The least of these" did the greatest.

the odds of no one on earth finding you hot, finding you to be a little work of art in appearance and/or personality, is ~1:8,000,000,000. For point of reference: Struck by lightning 1:15,000. Becoming a billionaire in the US 1:409,000. Getting hit by a meteorite 1:1,600,000. Dying in a plane crash 1:20,000,000. Becoming president 1:32,600,000. Winning the powerball lottery 1:292,000,000.

No matter how much you don't believe it yourself, objective math says you are a work of art.

You are the gestalt of trillions of living organisms, all working together to make you, you. Because you are worth it to them, even if they have to sacrifice their own existence, to keep you alive.

Even in death, you are not alone.

The realities of life cannot be controlled, all that you can do is choose how you respond to the things that happen. And we're all here to help you take those things you think make you a screw up and show you how they make you a better person

Unfortunately covid claimed the life of grampa, but that hasn't stopped them from celebrating together every year. A found family tradition caused solely by one woman's willingness to embrace a stranger over her own mistake.

This is the truth of people, sometimes we just need to be reminded of it to overcome our cynicism and fear of rejection.

You're not alone just because you broke up. And you won't be alone just because you admitted they weren't the right person for you. We're all still here for you

Other people can help you help yourself, if you listen to them :)

We believe in you. You get knocked down, but you get up again, they're never gonna keep you down

Everyone walks, the size of your step doesn't matter, just that you never stop :)

From Batman: Dark Victory by Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb. A retelling of the early years of Batman, shortly after dealing with a serial killer known as "Holiday" because every murder happened on one, Gotham and Batman are still reeling. In the midst of that, a boy's parents are murdered in front of him in a trapeze act.

I think, while Bruce and Dick already have fairly different personalities, Alfred's actions here go a long way to informing Dick's future. He's seen where trying to keep a stiff upper lip got Bruce, and recognizes now that compassion and love is what is necessary in the face of loss and rage.

"What unites us?" "Stories" It is a fundamental law of reality that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. In this way we are all immortal, for even in death we are still ourselves, we have simply changed. In death we are no different from life than our last moment of life is from the moment of our birth. We can never die so long as one atom of us exists in the world

Even in the darkest times, you are someone's happy thought. You are their reason to live, to fight. To see you again, even if it's only over a speaker and an internet connection.

Superman is less than a day from death, discussing with Wonder Woman, when he overhears a therapist stuck on a train begging his patient not to hang up

The Blonde boy is Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Susan, nephew of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. Franklin's powerset makes him basically a reality warping god. When he was a child he was extremely dangerous. Here he's old enough that he has some concept of the threat his powers pose to the world, which has made him hesitant to use them. And recently, at a critical moment, he hesitated, and Johnny was forced to sacrifice himself to hold an army of monsters in the Negative Zone and prevent them from escaping.

"What if?" is a powerful question. It's easy to be consumed about it. "What if I had done this differently", "what if I had stopped this", "what if?"

It's important not to lose yourself in ruminating on things you can't change. What's done is done, and we can't affect the past. But we can use the past to affect the future. We can learn from the choices we made, the mistakes, the bad decisions, and we can grow and use those to help other people. That is the truth of Spiderman, as much as everyone remembers "with great power comes great responsibility" rarely do people stop and realize how much great power they have. How much great power you have.

Even something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders, to let him know the world hadn't ended.

The natural state of humanity is the idea that everyone, everywhere, all at once, has a fair and equal say in every decision. It is the natural state of humanity to share, to be kind, to aid one another. Our ability to unify and to consider that even the "enemy" still has humanity is what has led us to be the dominant form of life on this planet.

The little girl Eri (grey hair peeking out from the lower image in the upper left) has been told her whole life she is a curse. She accidentally killed her father when her powers manifested, as she rewound him to before he was ever born, a clump of cells outside of a womb. Her mother abandoned her. Her grandfather's underling Overhaul (pictured top) adopted her, because he saw a way to weaponize her powers to strip everyone on earth of their powers so that he could return the world to its pre-powered society where the Yakuza reigned on top. To do this he would drain her of her blood until she died, then he'd use his own powers to disassemble and reassemble her back to life. All while telling her she was a curse. Treating her as subhuman. Abusing her so much she didn't think it was possible to escape. Abusing her so much she didn't WANT to escape because she believed she would kill everyone around her if she did.

Until Izuku came. And his kind arms hugged her for the first time. That one ray of hope was enough to convince her to try. To try and escape.

But that's not all. Izuku's powerset (green hair, bottom image) gives him Saitama level strength (you know, One Punch Man?). It makes him so strong he can kick off the air to propel himself. It basically turns him into superman...except that if he uses it at full power it will literally tear his limbs apart. By this point in the series he's shattered his arms and his fingers so many times (and had them healed) that he's begun to lose fine motor control in them.

Until he meets Eri. And her rewind lets him use his power at full strength without any fear, because she'll rewind his injuries BEFORE HE CAN EVEN FEEL THE PAIN. To him, she is the ultimate blessing, the power to save everyone without fear of crippling himself. The power to go at 100% for as long as he needs to defeat Overhaul

A little girl who was so abused she'd convinced HERSELF that she was unworthy of love, found someone kind and compassionate, and it proved not only was she worthy of kindness and compassion, but that she was valuable. She was a gift, not a curse.

Just like you are. you ARE a gift, even if you believe yourself unworthy.

But there's more. Izuku himself was born without powers. In a world where EVERYONE is super...he wasn't. Bullied his whole life for it too, by a kid with the power to literally generate explosions in his face at will. Despite that he wanted more than anything to become a Hero (Professionally. In this world cops are cops, but there are Heroes who handle the physical fighting of superpowered criminals). A boy with no powers wanted to make a living risking his life to battle superpowered criminals.

Even when he happened to meet All Might himself, he was told that it wasn't possible. That an unpowered person had no hope of going toe to toe with superpowered criminals. That he should just become a cop instead.

Then All Might saw his true character. His true will. Izuku, without thinking, saw a friend of his (worse he saw HIS BULLY. THE KID WHO WOULD BLOW HIM UP FOR KICKS) in danger, literally being suffocated to death by a slime monster. And without thinking he rushed in, desperately clawing at the slime monster trying to do something, ANYTHING, to save the life of HIS BULLY.

And that convinced All Might to share his powers. A unique superpower. One For All. The power that can be shared between people, that grows stronger and stronger over time. The power of Superman.

Because Izuku proved he had the will, what he needed was the help of someone else to give him the power to carry that will forward. As we all do.

We all can do greatness, we just need the help of others sometimes to see it, or to do it.

Even running on fumes, the last dregs of One for All still left within him after he passed it on to Izuku, the souls of everyone who came before, of every person who carried the torch, would not abandon All Might.

There's something extra fun about playing a game you know well with someone new, because you can protect them and help them grow and enjoy it :)

Because they literally married each other.

Sometimes it's hard to try to be a better person. But the good people around you will see that, and will support you

RIP Sir Gambon, Knight of Magic.

Sometimes we need a little help to brighten our day. Even if we're a giant man-eating dragon

No matter how much you may feel out of place, no matter how different you look from how you think the person you wanna be "should" look, others around you will see your passion and support it. Others around you can see you and they see in you where they once were too, and thus they see the value you have in your will to become something else.

QWEST! https://swordscomic.com/archive/Characters/Quest%20Sprout/

Sam Gamgee proving millennia old Elves wrong, again and again.

Yea that's Dracula, the Prince of Darkness himself, about to go protect Xander Harris on Buffy. Xander taught him how to ride a motorcycle

This is during the Sinestro Corps war, when the Sinestro corps have already killed hundreds of Lanterns. Hal is stranded in an entirely different universe...but the Green Lantern Corps still comes to save him

There's a lot to criticize Rick Sanchez C-137 for. He's a very bad person, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold *at best*. So much so a lot of people think he's a sociopath (he's not, he's got a horrifically untreated case of PTSD so severe he struggles to even acknowledge he wants to fix himself). But even in his darkest moments Morty Smith knows that Rick is there for him, that no matter what Grampa's coming to save him.

Even in death, no one is alone

Together with Senketsu (the animated School uniform on the left), Ryuuko (right) found who killed her father, she found the remains of her family, and she found a place to belong. Together we grow stronger. Let's fight as one.

"Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Spear shall be shaken! Shield shall be splintered! A sword-day! A red day! Ere the sun rises!"

Robin ran away from the crew to protect them from the reality of her past: as the sole survivor of a genocided island, she is living proof of the superweapon the World Government used to do it, and the only person who can contradict the official story. She gave herself up to be executed so her friends wouldn't be killed...and in response Luffy and the crew declared war on the World Government to come rescue her

A characterization so good it overwrote the comics identities for BOTH Raven and Beast Boy

Even if you only have one controller, one input, that doesn't mean you have to play alone :) Two heads are better than one because you have exponentially more trains of thought with two people both trying to solve one problem.

Solaire is the sole optimistic character in the first Dark Souls game. He leads the Warriors of Sunlight Covenant, which players can join to help other players defeat the hardest bosses in the game. In addition, he will fall and die if you don't rescue him from his despair.

But by proving that neither you nor he are alone, he shows up as THE ONLY PHANTOM YOU CAN SUMMON at the final boss. Meaning of all the NPC allies you can make through the game, he is the ONLY ONE who stands equal with you in accomplishment...and even that won't stop him from offering to lend a hand one final time.

Siegward is the closest thing Dark Souls 3 has to Solaire. He sadly cannot survive to make it to the final boss, but nevertheless his quest is to fulfill the last wish of his lifelong friend Yhorm the giant. A quest he can only finish if you aid him through his tribulations. "MAY THE SUN SHINE ON THIS LORD OF CINDER"

"Heed my words. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat." This is Malenia, the hardest boss in any FromSoftware game. Her claim, "I have never known defeat"? Yea that's accurate.

According to the data I can find as of May 2023, 34.6% of players have beaten Malenia at least once (they have the achievement for beating her). ~20 million total copies of Elden Ring were sold, which means that she has lost roughly 6 million times in the 15 months between when the game released and when this data was recorded.

In that time she has been fought over 329,000,000 times. Meaning that for every 1 successful attempt players lose 55 times. Back-of-napkin numbers she was killing a player EVERY TEN SECONDS.

According to this data: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/3o0w27/finalized_data_from_the_soulsborne_subreddits_on/

That's roughly 3 times the difficulty of the next hardest boss, across ALL THREE Dark souls games. She's 3 times harder to beat than Ornstein and Smough, who A) you have to fight at the same time with two of them and B) when you kill one the other goes Super Saiyan. So why am I mentioning her?

This is Klein Tsuboi, or rather his player character. Yea, a real person chose to dress like that.

Klein Tsuboi is better known as "Let Me Solo Her", because that's the name of his character. For 12 months, damn near 24 hours a day, he set down his summon sign outside Malenia's boss gate, ready and waiting for players to call upon him to beat the hardest boss in the game for them.

A regular person looked at Malenia and her difficulty and said "I'm going to help other players beat this boss". Even more, he said "I'm going to help other players beat this boss, and to ensure they don't die while I'm busy killing her I'm openly going to tell them to let me do all the hard work while they just focus on staying alive"

A regular person, 12 months straight for nearly 24 hours per day, happily sat outside her boss gate waiting to be called to help another person in need defeat what is quantifiably the hardest task in any Soulsborne game ever made.

He was so ubiquitous outside of Malenia's boss gate that a substantial amount of players didn't even realize he was a real person and thought he was some kind of joke NPC added by the devs (they've done similar before, such as Jester Thomas, seen here: http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/jester-thomas He's a pyromancer who's deliberately overpowered as hell and will absolutely demolish the boss you can summon him for without even trying)

Fans were so appreciative of Klein that they managed to convince Bandai Namco to do this: https://nitter.poast.org/TsuboiKlein/status/1544772979988520960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1544772979988520960%7Ctwgr%5E32507f8bf5b1ede4a6d507a7a0764e4fac922325%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgamerant.com%2Felden-ring-let-me-solo-her-bandai-namco-gift-sword%2F

Guts, a man who's felt alone his entire life. He was born from his mother's hanging corpse. His adoptive mother died. His adoptive father tried to murder him. Finally, in a hellish world of monsters and murderers, after a lifetime of killing as a child mercenary, he found a family in the Band of the Falcon. Then it all went to shit. His family was slaughtered at the behest of their leader, Griffith, who used their deaths as a sacrifice to rise to godhood. Betrayed, with his family dead around him, and the love of his life about to be murdered, he cut off his own arm to escape and try and rescue her. But even then he could not defeat the army of monsters and save her. He and Casca were to be the final sacrifices, Griffith's most trusted friends betrayed...

Until the Skull Knight (pictured behind Guts) arrived. The Skull Knight didn't just cut his way through an army of monsters, he cut his way into the alternate reality where this sacrifice was taking place. A man Guts had met just once, who he knew nothing about. Even in his most helpless moment, in a world that was literally hell on earth, he was not alone, a stranger came to his rescue. Because of the Skull Knight, Guts lived. Casca lived. And together they rose again, stronger than before.

Malcolm never called them back. On a dying ship, shot in the stomach and bleeding to death himself, he passed out before he could reach the button telling his crew that he'd fixed the issue and they could come home.

But Zoe wouldn't let him die alone, and in turn the rest of the crew refused to abandon him.

People forget this because of how stupidly overpowered Goku and Vegeta are, but Krillin is perhaps the best person in the entire series. as the Toonami promo says:

"The Right Hand of Justice. In the heat of battle there's NO ONE BETTER TO HAVE BY YOUR SIDE"

The law is not always just. It is our duty as people to be just, even if it means being unlawful. And the good people in the world will see that, and they will stand by you. they will recognize that you did what is right, even if it was illegal.

Remember: Picard is uncomfortable at best around children. But in the face of a boy who has lost his mother, even Picard can overcome his fears for the sake of comraderie

The guy is diplomat who is deaf and (one way) telepathic (he can read minds but not communicate with them). When his interpreters are killed he's effectively trapped and isolated despite being surrounded by people, Picard does his best to assure him

"YOU ARE NOT ALONE. WE ARE ALL IN THIS. TOGETHER!"

This is from the episode after she slept with Angel and cost him his soul, turning him into Angelus "The Demon with the Face of an Angel" and by far the most despicable Vampire ever shown in the Buffyverse continuity (which is saying something given that Vampires by the very nature are demons possessing the corpses of humans, using their memories and total lack of a conscience to torture those around them)

Even now Giles knows she isn't to blame, and that he will always be there for her

"The Last Centurion" is Rory, her husband. Due to Timey Wimey Ball stuff he ended up standing vigil for millennia waiting for her to return. Even if you think you're alone, there's always those who are with you, no matter how long the wait.

Carolina (teal) has spent her life seeking revenge on her father for the atrocities he committed as head of the Freelancer Program. Church (the ghost) meanwhile is an AI "clone" of Carolina's father who was tortured by the Freelancer program to tear himself apart and create more AIs for it. As a result his own personality has fragmented to such a degree he thought he was an entirely different person. And in the pursuit of his past he lost nearly everyone he cared about (and died several times)

In effect, Church is the father Carolina wishes she could have had

The five elements in Magic: The Gathering represent tenuous bonds at best. Even more so when you consider that Gideon (the man on the ground) represents White, which all four other colors disagree with in some way. Jace (blue) seeks knowledge that White wants restricted, Chandra (red) represents anarchy/freedom that White want's controlled, Garruk (green) represents the untamed Wilds that White wants civilized, and Sorin (black) is a Vampire who practices "impure" blood magic.

But no matter how different they are, together they agree to stand by one another

The War Doctor. The Soldier. The Murderer. The one who lost the right to call himself "The Doctor" after he genocided an entire planet full of men, women, and children to end The Time War. Even in his darkest moment...hand literally hovering over the button...The Doctor's later iterations wouldn't give up on him. The version of themselves they hated so much they refused to even acknowledge he existed, even then they didn't give up on him.

"Good men do not need rules. Now is not the time to find out why I have so many".

To preface this: Billy's friend was killed by police in-on-the-take who were trying to shoot Captain Marvel while he's in his human form and missed. Billy, unsurprisingly, went into a rage and attacked the police precinct where the cops worked, endangering civilians in the process.

Notice how fast Superman goes from upset to terrifyingly, world endingly pissed the second he realizes that someone saddled a child with the responsbilities he lives with every day. Because that is the truth of Superman:

It's sadly a truth of reality that much of the reason for the modern shape and culture of US cities is a direct result of active efforts by corporations to undermine unions. To undermine people's ability to work together as allies to say "this is not right, and it must be changed" They went so far as the rewrite the face of where we live to try and silence us. But they can't stop reality. We ARE together. We STAND together, and we say what is and isn't right, TOGETHER.

An impossible decision. A world being consumed by superhumans on par with gods, so far gone they've ceased to fight in the name of justice or what is right, they've become little more than glorified gangs, battling to combat the boredom of a life where the world around you may as well be cardboard

Where those selected by society to protect us aren't just ALLOWED to kill with impunity, but EXPECTED to.

And this is where it's gotten them. Open warfare between those who want to be allowed to kill in the name of "justice" without accountability, and those who demand accountability and have the power to enforce their will on their god-like "children".

And humanity caught in the crossfire. A war of gods in a world of men. Left with only once perceived choice, humanity chooses to end the bloodshed with genocide. A bomb sheathed in a forcefield impervious to all known metahuman powers (though conspicuously not magic) with the power to erase anyone who isn't explicitly invulnerable on a level equivalent to Superman himself.

What choice can you make? Let the bomb fall and kill all the gods? Stop the bomb and let the gods kill humanity in the crossfire of the war they wage between themselves? You can't save everyone.

You make the only choice: you save as many people as you can.

The world around us is no different. Climate change is going to erase most of humanity and most of life on this planet. Capitalism has bred fascism that is promising wars and genocide that have already begun in places like Ukraine and China. The bomb is falling. What do you do? What can anyone do?

We can save as many people as we can. We can use everything we have within our means to help and protect as many of each other as we can. We can't worry about "what if", we can't wait for other people to do it for us, we take what we know, what we have, and we use it to help each other, to protect as many people as we can.

Even something as simple as a hotel room for a night to someone with nowhere to sleep. Or a water bottle for the thirsty on a hot day. We help each other. We can't save everyone, but we can save each other.

Even if it's just the dog, someone believes in you. And that can give you the power to move mountains :)

This is a photo from a chicken that adopted a bunch of puppies. IIRC the chicken had stopped laying eggs but was still happy to raise more. Because ultimately this is the truth of life: caring about other life, even life that is in no way your own. It's rooted so deeply into our existence that it's a feature of basically all life on earth, even the arguably non-sentient life. We all DO care about one another's well being, no matter how much the world tries to tell us we don't, can't, or shouldn't.

Even loss, when you feel at your most alone, there are others like you out there, experiencing the same loss you do, with the same hobbies you have, to share with you

This hand signal, this index finger pointed up with thumb out and a closed fist, is a sign across the world in the anime Fairy Tail. It's a sign among the members of the Fairy Tail guild that they will always be there for each other. No matter how far apart they are. No matter how old they become. This is the sign that they will always be there for one another, and to see this sign is to know you are not alone.

Sometimes you are the one who reminds someone else they're not alone

In the face of the end of the world, Yoritomo's clan was too weak to join the others. Worn out from endless defenses of their home territory, Yoritomo could not afford to send the requested delegation of twenty warriors to the united clans in facing the ultimate threat to their world. And so he sent only himself. But even then, the son who had been born to the Bayushi, whom he had adopted, would not let his father go alone.

Because even in your weakest moments, you are stronger and kinder than you can remember

This comic came out in 1982 by the way. The man in green is Steve's old friend Arnie, a gay man who (in this issue) was brainwashed by the Red Skull to push his fascist agenda. (Bernie is Cap's current girlfriend)

No matter how forgotten you feel, your friends still remember you

The Match Girl is a very old story. It's often been called "Suffer Porn". It's about a little girl who sells matches, freezing to death on christmas night. No one will buy her matches, so she lights them one by one, staring into the bright flame, dreaming of a better day. Until finally she dies, cold, alone, and with nothing.

But that's just a story. In truth, there is always someone there. Always someone watching. Even if that someone is Death, having taken up the role of Santa Claus for a single day.

She had to cheat to win, to accelerate her consciousness to 100x normal, just to beat what he could achieve naturally, to beat his high score in a VR Squash video game. Even as a sweaty, short loser full of insecurity and self loathing, she witnessed his true might. To her, his was mightier than Hercules.

True love, real, tangible love, exists. No matter how you feel, how unworthy you think you are, true, tangible love will recognize your strengths and want you for that.

The whole world can tell you you're so hideous it's a curse and it won't make them any less wrong. Somewhere out there there's someone who sees the blessing you are and draws strength from it

Crows remember people who help them, and they understand "shiny trinket good" and will share with those who help. because the natural state of sentient life is to help one another.

All animals understand compassion and companionship, and they understand it well enough they can be compassionate even to those who are not their species. Including you.

Anyone can be a hero. Even with something as small and simple as putting a dollar in a display to make a toddler's day brighter.

There's no shame in struggling despite all the advantages you may think you have in life. The right people won't think less of you for your difficulties in life :)

You carry with you the hopes and dreams of everyone who came before you. Whether you realize it or not, just by existing you are everything they could have ever wanted.

Even if you can't believe in yourself, others see the value you have. Do not insult them by distrusting them, accept that they recognize the value you may not see in yourself

Never let your pride hold you back from improving yourself. And never let someone else's pride hold them back from improving, if you can help :)

Escanor (mustache) is essentially a Sun trapped in human form. He is a mortal, but his strength and personality grow and wane with the rising and setting of the sun. At night he is weak and timid, during the day he is the most powerful human in existence, even stronger than gods and demons.

This scene takes place at night. Gowther (pink hair) has trapped him in a nightmare. A nightmare that, like the worst nightmares, has some truth to it. Escanor is in love with Merlin, however Merlin is A) immortal and B) met the love of her life 3 full millennia before Escanor was even born. It is a cold hard truth that she will never love him the way he loves her.

But that doesn't matter. She is still his friend, and he still sees the brightness that shines from her. A brightness so mighty that even in the dead of night, when he is at his weakest, she shines bright enough to him to allow him to tap his daylight form.

Even in the darkest moments of our lives, there is light. A light as bright as the sun itself, if we are just willing to see it.

Best credit I've been able to find is: tgoamt on tumblr. No matter how unique or specific we may feel our suffering is, there is always others out there who share in it.

Even within our single universe, there are untold trillions of lives depending on you. Every second, a new you is born, thanks to the you of the previous one. Who you are as you read this will have changed from the first word to the last one, and who you are at the end of this sentence will be entirely because the you who began it existed. Even when you feel alone there are infinite versions of yourself who believe in you and your ability to bring them into existence in the future. And all you have to do, is keep being yourself, and they will keep being born.

"Society grows when men plant trees whose shade they will never sit under" It is the duty of the elder generations to help the younger generations battle their demons.

Because sometimes the problem you have is a result of your own failure to help others when you had the chance. Even if you can't realize it at the time, sometimes all it takes to help yourself is to help others.

Speaking as an autistic person and a parent (sort of, it's complicated. Eldest child and I was a decade older than my next eldest sibling so I got child care duties)

It can be terrifying when you can't be there for someone. No matter how much you work to protect or assist them, eventually you're just not gonna be able to be there. We can't be everywhere all the time.

But it's ok, because other people will be there, so they'll never be alone :)

It's hard to make progress. It can feel like you're all alone, but know that you aren't. Even though we've never met, we're all cheering for you.

the true rarity of this is the people being willing to speak up. The amount of people who look at you, and see your pain, and wish to help is far more than you think. Most just feel powerless to do so. But they shouldn't. You shouldn't. Sometimes all it takes is sitting down and talking to someone in pain :)

Your ancestors smile upon you, Dragonborn.

The critical difference between a child and an adult is that a child hasn't internalized the lies society tells us about how we're "Supposed" to do things.

SIAMES BREAK. This is "No Lullaby" by the spanish band SIAMES, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYgrDcXHLwA

It's about how even if others, particularly your younger sibling, can be a hassle and an annoyance, they still can support you and give you strength through their own unique abilities. They can bring you victory against obstacles in ways you never even considered.

This is "The Wolf" by SIAMES see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX44CAz-JhU It's about how everybody is running from something. Addiction, pain, bad memories, or even just society mistreating the shit out of you. But even if you don't think you're strong enough to face the wolf chasing you alone, our basic human empathy gives us strength to face not only our own pain but an entire wolf pack for others.

"A hero can be anyone — even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders to let him know that the world hadn't ended"

Random people on the internet, people who don't even know you, love you and care about your well being.

From the comic Low by Rick Remender. Untold millennia in the future humanity lives underwater after the sun went supernova and irradiated the surface. Life is slowly dying. But a core tenent of the series is the religion of optimism. It's predicated on a bit of belief and a bit of science: When you observe a quantum object, you affect its behavior. By measuring quantum stuff we alter it. Well quantum stuff is what everything's made of. So if you impose your will, your desire, on the world, you can affect it. If you choose to focus on red cars, you'll see lots of red cars. If you choose to focus on bad, you'll see lots of bad. But if you choose to see good, to see hope, you will find it. What you want WILL come true, even if it doesn't take the exact form you thought it would, or it doesn't arrive at the speed you thought. Because we are the gods who affect the world. Together we make the world what it is. We bring what we choose to bring to it, to each other. As long as we hold true to each other, to our hearts, we will succeed.

It's never as bad as you think, there is ALWAYS someone on your side. Sometimes it's our duty to be that person, to let someone else know you are on their side.

The greatest thing my wife has done to me is to free me from the burden of terror that came with being raised by an abusive stepdad. The fear that just existing as myself would hurt me and others. People who love you recognize that sometimes they just don't have the energy to match the energy you're putting out. They don't hate you for it, they acknowledge it. Sometimes our gas tank is simply empty. It's not a black mark on you. It's not a black mark on them. The mark of true friends are people who can acknowledge that THIS IS A REALITY OF BEING HUMAN. We will not always sync up, but it's not worth getting upset over.

Take it from someone who almost married an abuser because they were the first person to pay attention to me who wasn't legally and/or biologically obligated to: this is the truth. This is the truest reality you will ever hear. Now do not mistake me, you are not flawless. You are never done improving as a person. But the right people, the people who love you, they acknowledge your flaws and love you despite that. The people who really care about you, they see the good AND the bad, and they value them accordingly.

You are never as alone as you feel. So do not make the mistake of sacrificing happiness for companionship. You never need to fear loneliness, so do not settle for suffering just so you won't be alone. Do not value others or be valued solely for being a warm body nearby. Value yourself and others for who they are. find the value in yourself that is worth cherishing, the value that we all see in you :)

The right person recharges your emotional batteries just by existing.

In the grim darkness of the near future, there was only war. Until there wasn't. Until one side was willing to extend an olive branch. Diplomacy. Unity. Together on Babylon 5, dozens of species banded together, to oppose those who would undermine civilization, to defend against those who would subvert, who would spread hate. Humanity was nearly eradicated by war, but the willingness of different races to discuss, to converse, to share, brought not just humanity but the entirety of the cosmos together, and ended eons of threat by the Shadows and the Vorlons.

"Why are you here?"

"And Where are you going?"

It can be terrifying to face fascism. It seems an overwhelming force. You can and will be branded a traitor, an outlaw, cast out of your home and society. But fighting fascism is what is RIGHT. And those around you will see it.

When the Captain of Babylon 5 heard Earth's government had been couped by President Clark, he declared secession from the Earth jurisdiction. He was declared all of the above, and Clark sent a huge military force to board Babylon 5 and put down this "rebellion".

But thanks to diplomacy, Babylon 5 was not alone. The nations of the Minbari came together to defend it. And with this spark of open resistance, Clark's fascist government was eventually toppled.

An important message on its own, it becomes even more important when you see this happened: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/the-daily-show-found-a-woman-in-russia-to-speak-out-for-lgbt The things you do and say can have far, far reaching impacts. Impacts you never expected. Just as we define fiction, fiction defines us by the lessons we choose to take from it.

This one has more layers than you might think. 1st, there's the kindness of a woman, to see a child so happy being harmlessly wrong, and to encourage him, to lift him up. 2nd, there's the meaningfulness of the MCU, its impact on people's lives, and the installment of Black Panther into that universe. Afrofuturism is not a new thing, nor is the Black Panther as a character, however the unique combination of elements within the film itself brought an ideal of black power to a minority that has been oppressed around the world, and actively genocided to the point that many "black" cultures around the world are only that. All culture they once had has been destroyed by the forced diaspora and genocide perpetrated against their ancestors, leaving only their racial solidarity, the only thing left is to say "you and I suffer under the same oppression, and for that we stand together". And Black Panther brought to those oppressed peoples a symbol of strength, a symbol of power, and a symbol of heroism. 3rd is a bit esoteric: "Yibambe!" is what Black Panther and the Wakandans shout as a battle chant. It's isiXhosa, a language of the same family as Zulu, one of the 16 official languages of South Africa. Nelson Mandela famously spoke it. In isiXhosa, "Yibambe" means "Hold Fast", as in "whatever's coming, don't run, don't fear. Stand and face it". Against the hatred of the world, Yibambe. Against generations of institutional racism and genocide, Yibambe. Against oppression, injustice, struggle, Yibambe. Against starvation, poverty, cancer....death...

Yibambelele nkqi. RIP Chadwick Boseman

sometimes all you can afford is the cheap option. It is the duty of those who have more to help you when they see.

It may feel like the whole world is against you, like the government is against you, like there's no one who will help you. But there is. There always is.

"This report is maybe 12 years old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried...until River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear. Cuz there's a whole verse of folk who're gonna know it too. Somebody has to speak. For these people."

An effort to chemically brainwash an entire planet full of people to be more "peaceful" ended up killing them all. They got exactly what they wanted, a whole world so peaceful that the people stopped going to work. stopped eating. Stopped living. 30 million people just laid down and let themselves die.

But worse, 0.01% of the population had an adverse reaction to the chemicals. Rather than becoming more peaceful, they became hyper violent to the point of mutilating themselves. they became Reavers, a race of space zombie berserkers who raped and killed their way across the edges of the system, a group so horrific that if you're VERY VERY LUCKY, they will rape you to death, eat your flesh, and wear your skin as clothing...in that order. And the rich parliament that ordered it covered it up.

"Guy killed me, Mal. Killed me with a Sword...how weird is that? They destroyed my equipment. But I have a backup unit. Bottom of the complex, right over the generator. Hard to get to...I know they missed it"

"Shepard Book used to say...you can't do something smart? Do something right."

There are bad people out there. That's undeniable fact. But there are good too. There are people like us. People who, when we look at the face of the terrible, the bad, the unjust, will say "this is not ok". Will stand together, no matter what is thrown at us, and do what's right. Even if it's just the ten of you, ten people who couldn't be more different and just happened to live and work on the same boat. Sometimes that's all it takes to stand against an entire army, and entire military, an entire government, and win.

"You've always taken care of me...My turn."

"The battle against mental illness cannot be won decisively. It is a long campaign against an enemy who never tires, whose forces swell to twice their size whenever you look away. Battle against a foe of such magnitude, who occupies your very mind… every moment you survive is a triumph against all odds. There is no more honorable combat." Maybe everyone doesn't see the battles you wage within yourself daily, but the right people do, and they cheer for you

this is from Saga (Written by Brian K Vaughan, who also did Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, The Private Eye, and Paper Girls). The Lynx at her side is the Lying Cat, a mystical creature that can talk, but only to say "Lying". It functions as a mystical lie detector, it will only speak when the statement in front of it is anything less than true. If there was ever proof that the things you tell yourself, the way you feel about your worth because of your pain, is pure bullshit, it's the Lying Cat. TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE NEXT SENTENCE: The reason she feels dirty is because she's an ex sex slave who was repeatedly raped. As a six year old. but the Lying Cat knows it's not her fault. No matter how guilty you feel, your pain is valid, but your shame is not.

Punk is the appearance of aggression against oppression. It is hostile to hostility, it rejects a society that insists that people conform to an impossible standard that is actively detrimental to their well being, both mentally and physically. The truth of being punk is recognizing oppression vs oppressed and never being hostile to those in need, only to those who would force need onto others for the sake of enriching themselves. Punk knows no race, age, gender, sex, or identity except the willingness to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Punk ideology is the modern idea of a knight in shining armor, the fantastic ideal of a person willing to put themselves between a bad person and a good one and say "no, YOU move." And that is why a proper punk is a friend to all children.

SPOILERS FOR ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE IN THE NEXT IMAGE

Hobie/Spider Punk I think displays this truth of what "punk" is quite clearly. At first it's played as a joke, but his outward persona is a sort of "obfuscating stupidity". in reality he's a lot more cunning and focused and precise than he appears.

I think most tellingly is how while everyone else is arguing with Miguel trying to tear Miles down, what is does Hobie do? He tells Miles how to lift himself up. Rather than futiley trying to get "the system" as it were (in this case exemplified by Miguel's insistence on the "Canon") to reconsider or change just a little bit, Hobie recognizes that the system is flawed and gives Miguel the tools to liberate himself from it. He, like everyone, knows the system has decided that Miles, through no fault of his own, is "wrong", is "guilty", is "out", is effectively a criminal. The System has decided a hero and a teenage boy is the criminal. Hobie sees this injustice and gives "the criminal" the means to fight the system that is oppressing him.

A feature Hobie then repeats when he gives Gwen the means to circumvent the system and travel between dimensions herself.

(Unrelated but I'm also pretty confident that Miguel isn't actually the real Miguel. A full explanation here: but TL;DR Miguel's powerset is wrong and Miguel's lore is wrong, Earth 298 Miguel has a family, for one thing)

Kindness is recognizing the struggles and realities of another person, not blaming them for how they made you feel but making judgements based on why they made you feel the way you do. No matter how capitalism tells us to hate, to exploit, to lie, cheat, and steal, it is always important to remember the human being on the other side of the interaction

Even when society degrades, demeans, belittles, or outright criminalizes you, you are not alone. People you've never met, people you never even knew existed, are willing to talk to you and make sure you're ok

Our duty, as people, is to help. Helping is the natural state of humanity, which is why capitalism works so hard to convince you that helping or getting helped is bad. But helping is natural. And asking for help is natural. There will always be someone there to help, even if it's not the first person you ask.

The big guy there is a Wraithlord, a dead Eldar drawn back from the closest thing the Eldar have to an afterlife (the souls of their dead live in the frames of their home space ships) and permanently implanted into a gigantic mech. Because this deprives them of their "rest", it's only done in the direst of circumstances. Yet no Eldar turns down the chance to defend their home as a Wraith construct.

"There are things in life you can't fight. You see a hurricane coming you get out of the way. But in a Jaeger you can fight the hurricane. You can win"

No jaeger can run without two pilots, two people willing to work together, to be totally open with one another, no secrets. To open yourself up so willingly to another person is their strength. The strength to fight the hurricane.

They counted on the humans to hide, to fail, to flee

They never expected us to stand, together

Neil Armstrong never made a secret of the truth: He was just the first guy on the moon. If it wasn't him it would have been someone else. He was not special, he was not unique. He was no more deserving of adulation than any of the thousands of people who got him there. And he recognized that it is only together, because we are NOT alone, that we can achieve greatness as humanity. Neil had 400,000 people directly contributing to getting him and Buzz up to the moon. His first words on the moon reflect that truth. His achievement is our achievement, together.

UNDERTALE SPOILERS BELOW

Yea ha ha it's a funny joke but think about that. We as a species in general give so much of a shit about people we've never met, about people we by definition CAN never meet, that the very idea of hurting a fictional representation on a page is antithetical to us. We'd rather leave a book open than risk the chance of actually hurting someone. Because we DO give that much of a shit about one another, no matter what everyone around us may insist.

The flower there wants to kill you (yes you, the person reading this now) because he knows that if you beat "the game" that he'll cease to exist. He'd rather torture you for eternity than let you finish the game.

However, if you get the golden ending, the friends and allies you've made along the way stand by you. They refuse to let you fall and they all stand with you against him, even though Flowey the Flower, within the rules of the game, should be unstoppable. Thanks to their willingness to stand beside you Flowey LITERALLY cannot kill you, even once. You can't have your HP reduced to 0. Because everyone else will keep you going. Even when he tries to harness all their own powers as his own, they prevent him from being able to reduce your HP to 0 with even his most powerful attack.

You have no idea the power you wield until you see someone you can help :)

And sometimes, it's you who is the one who reminds someone else they're not alone.

This is from Planetary: Night on Earth. A Trio of superhuman "Archeologists for the secret history of the world" travel to the Gotham in their world in search of a man:

John Black. A serial killer who has been murdering people by transplanting them around the multiverse (one woman he killed by transporting half of her body save for her skeleton into another universe). In the process of trying to escape, the stress of being chased trigger's Black's ability...rotating himself and the Planetary trio to another Gotham.

A Gotham with a Batman

And Black is losing control, irregularly shifting them between universes. "Somehow he's taking us, himself, and knowledge of his crimes with him"

It turns out John is the child of a victim of a secret US Cold War concentration camp: City Zero, where political dissidents were taken to be experimented on. When his powers manifested his parents were murdered.

Shot in front of him.

In crime alley.

For eons it roamed, world to world. And devoured. No species ever survived it. An entire solar system armored and booby trapped failed to stop it. A thought virus that could kill through memes couldn't stop it. An entire race enhanced to power levels that would cowtow Superman couldn't stop it. Then it got to us.

Six billion voices screaming "we will live!" together, focused through the mind of Charles Xavier and fired at the destroyer. Yet even this was only enough to hold it in place...for the killing blow.

The energy of an alternate reality, a new big bang from a universe just waiting to be born, channeled through a hole in reality by a device built by hundreds of experts, and fired at Gah Lak Tus

Because together we are unstoppable.

Izanami is one of the two creator gods in Japanese myth, along with Izanagi (her husband). That is the truth of "I am thou, and thou art I", the Arc Words of the Persona series, that true strength is not the demons and myths that humanity makes, but humanity itself, in our ability to join together and rise above any foe or force. That is why Persona 4 ends with everyone together able to create Izanagi-no-Okami: The King of Gods, Izanagi. Because together we are stronger than any god.

NSFW BELOW

No matter how horrific your trauma, there will be someone willing to bear it with you. Even if it terrifies a literal fucking superhero.

Comic is Empowered, by Adam Warren. It's extremely NSFW but as you can see from the above and the below, it's excellent. He also uploads it for free here: https://www.empoweredcomic.com/. Go read it. It's spectacular.

They say we die twice. Once, when the breath leaves our body, and once when our name is said for the last time. Yet, as long as there are those who remember us, we can never die. Those who knew us, they pass along our actions to the next generation, and that generation passes those memories on to the next. And so, we are truly immortal, for as long as there is life we are remembered and carried on.

No matter how far you think you've fallen, even if you're a rotting burnt corpse, the greatness others see in you is still there. You just need the confidence to see it in yourself :)

SPOILERS BELOW FOR EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

Evelyn by this point has gained omniprecense. She exists in every reality in the multiverse at once. The ones where life never happened. The ones where she died. The ones where everyone but her died. Where she is happy. where she is sad. where she is homophobic. where she is gay. And no matter what all she sees is how meaningless everything is....

Except for Waymond. Some noteworthy facts about this scene: None of these Waymonds are aware of the multiverse. The one in the striped shirt is "regular" Waymond, not the verse-jumping Alpha Waymond that's been hijacking his body regularly in the film. And the Waymond in the suit is just a regular CEO who never married Evelyn. And yet they both see the truth of the multiverse:

Reality is what we make of it. Reality is meaningful because of the bonds we choose. The families we create. The friends we ally with. The good we choose to see in others. The hope we choose to have for tomorrow. Life has no meaning save that which we choose to imbue it with. We are the gods that give life meaning.