Casual Reminder: If Someone Asks To Kiss You You Should NOT SAY SURE. You Should WANT IT!!! If You Don't

Me'orot is actually a sci-fi convention! It is also an Aguda con. They Also have Dorot which is in Heifa and is at the same time as Harucon so it's less popular. I never been to one of their conventions, but Bein Hashurot are trying to follow Noar Kore's footsteps, so they might be worth checking out. Also, about the animusicals, you can find many of them on Youtube. And the Sushi's free and Janken musical both have English subtitles, but there are many others avalible in Hebrew. I really recommend volunteering in the convention - I volunteered in about 6 cons and it's very fun to help the fandom community, meet new people, and help make the conventions

Hi. Can you share a cool fact about Israel? How's the fan culture over there? You guys got conventions? 👀

BOY DO WE

There are 4 big conventions in Israel, run by two organisations- the Israeli Society For Science Fiction and Fantasy(known shortly as "Ha'Aguda), and AMAI, the Israeli Manga and Anime Organization.

The Aguda's conventions are the biggest and most well-known. There's Icon during Sukkot and Olamot("worlds") during Passover, and both are always in Tel Aviv. Those are the comic-con of Israel- they have everything geeky and fanish, from every type of media. They last 2-3 days, and are free to enter but you have to pay to go into specific events. Those are my favorites!

AMAI's conventions are centered around Japanese media and culture. There are also two- Harucon at Purim(the closest con), and Animatsuri at the summer. Those cons costs money to enter, but once you're inside you can go anywhere as long as there are free seats. Those cons are in Jerusalem, and are very big. They also sometimes include a run of an Animusical(anime-inspired original musical production done by members of the community)

Other then those 4, we have lots of smaller cons done by different organizations and for different specific topics- there's Meorot which is a Harry Potter and LOTR con set during Hannukah, the Aguda also has Mitopia in the summer, that's centered specifically around books, and there's Draconicon for DND and RPG players! And a lot more! Last year I also had the chance to go to the first Sha'atnez, a con surrounding specifically Jewish Fantasy and Fantastic Judaism. It was fantastic and I REALLY hope it'll be an annual thing.

Interesting thing about fan culture here- the main two groups involved in it are queers, and religious orthodox jews. Both are in the fannish scene in much larger percantages then they make of the general population! I suspect the religious thing is because Shabbat-keepers have a lot of time when all they can do is read, and queers are already very dominant in such communities, but it's still very cool I think:)

Anyway fun fact, I've been in the artist alley for... 6-7 cons up untill now? My favorite to sell in was Noar Kore which sadly does not exist anymore but I REALLY like doing those booths.

When I was 3 years old I went to a preschool that had this little green crocheted crocodile finger puppet that was my absolute favorite toy to play with of all time. I named her Chelsea, because Chelsea starts with C and crocodile starts with C and more often than not wild animals in fiction aimed at kids have names that start with the same first letter as their species. I played with Chelsea every day, because she was my favorite toy, and because the other kids weren't really interested in her, and also because I eventually started to hide her in a special secret spot in the room so no one else would find her before I did. She was so beloved by me that when I graduated from preschool, my teachers gave Chelsea to me permanently, because it was clear no one else would ever love that little crochet crocodile as much as me anyway (in part because I hid her). They waited a few weeks after I graduated before doing it, too, and sent Chelsea with some post cards as if the crocodile had been on a whirlwind "travel the world" vacation before deciding to come live with me.

And Chelsea remained my favorite toy all through my childhood. There were others I loved nearly as much, like my Imperial Godzilla and the big red T.rex from the first Jurassic Park toy line and my tiny knockoff plush Charmander, but Chelsea always held the place of honor in my heart. She was my absolute favorite toy.

I kept a lot of my favorite toys through adolescence, even if social pressure eventually got me to give away a lot of them (and some, y'know, broke). That's obviously not surprising to you if you've followed my blog, since I still collect toys into my adulthood. But it's important to note because while I know I made a conscious effort to never throw out Chelsea every time I pared down my collection... at some point, she went missing.

I became aware of it when I graduated from high school. I was feeling really emotional about leaving that stage of my life and, y'know, becoming an adult and shit, and in that state I decided to find Chelsea to reassure myself that I hadn't entirely left childhood behind. But Chelsea wasn't there. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find Chelsea anyway.

And that was, like, devastating, because the only explanation was that somehow, at some point, I had accidentally tossed her out with some other "childhood junk" while trying to grow up and be responsible in my teen years. I had literally thrown away my childhood in a careless attempt to be more grown up.

Of course I knew she was just a toy - nothing more than some yarn twisted together in the loose shape of a crocodile, lifeless and soul-less and more or less worthless in the objective light of day. But she was also Chelsea, my best friend since i was three, my stalwart little pal, a source of comfort for most of my life at that point, and I had just... tossed her out! Like garbage! What kind of person was I becoming if I could do that to my best friend?

I was very visibly distraught, and my mom noticed. Being very crafty, she tried to find the pattern for Chelsea so she could knit me a new one. The problem is, she had no idea where to find said pattern. She checked all her books of crochet patterns, and when that failed she tried the internet, but no matter how hard she looked, she found nothing.

So my mom found the next best thing.

The original Chelsea was a tiny finger puppet, and I had "met" her when I was three. Well, I was eighteen now - shouldn't Chelsea have grown too? And as has been established, this crocodile was fond of whirlwind vacations. My mom found a pattern that looked as much like Chelsea as possible while also being a much bigger crocodile, and gifted her to me before I left for college - to show that while we can't stop the flow of time or how it changes us, that doesn't mean we have to leave it behind.

And yeah, I decided to believe it. That's Chelsea now. Yeah, I know that in reality it's a completely different set of yarn made by my mom rather than... whoever it was that crocheted the original Chelsea, but then, Chelsea was never really the yarn. She was the feelings I put into the yarn, you know? So that's Chelsea, all grown up, and still my most prized toy.

...

Flash forward... Jesus, eighteen years, holy shit. A few weeks ago I saw a post trying to identify a different crochet crocodile pattern, and thinking it was cute, I decided to try and look for it on ebay and etsy, just to see if maybe I could find it. I didn't, but do you know what I found instead?

A very familiar crochet crocodile finger puppet. An intensely familiar one, you might say. Of course I bought it. And of course I asked the seller if, perhaps, they might have the pattern for it or know where it came from (they did not, alas). And after a few days, she showed up at my house.

She's not Chelsea, obviously. For one thing, she's far too clean and fresh looking - Chelsea was very well loved, and looked the part, while this crocodile finger puppet has definitely not endured years upon years of a child's affection. And, more importantly, she's not Chelsea because we've already established that Chelsea grew up into a bigger crochet crocodile. This has to be Chelsea's younger sister, Cici.

And if I could find another of Chelsea's kind after all these years, then maybe, with a bit of luck, I might find the pattern for her, and be able to make more of them. Fill the world with Chelseas.

In Israel, both men and women need to do military service, but the men's service is longer. If you change your gender legally, you serve more/less, have to dress like your gender (there are different hair and clothes requirements for men and women)

Finland has mandatory military service for all able-bodied men. The summons come to every man on the year they turn 18, and your service status is visible on your government records - whether you've done your service, are yet to be summoned, or deemed excempt from service and for what reasons. Even if you're blind, deaf, in a wheelchair and cognitively impaired, you still need to show up for the evaluation, though ideally you'll already have a doctor's note for the occasion that basically just says "I mean just fucking look at this guy", and the military doctor will look at you and go "yeah" and sign you off as unfit for service for the time being.

And if you get your legal gender changed, your military status updates accordingly. When I got my gender marker changed to male in my late 20s, I automatically showed up in the government systems as an adult male who has not done military service yet, and I got summons the same year. However, back then being transgender was a diagnosis that you need a doctor's evaluation on, and being trans was one of those medical conditions that give you the option to opt out of service - in the "you can go if you think you can handle it" way, but you have no obligation to volunteer. So I didn't.

I met a friend recently who mentioned that he's going to wait a few years yet before getting his gender legally changed, so he can age out of the conscription system and avoid summons altogether. I said that I was released from service due to trans diagnosis, and asked if he can't do so as well. He said no - the law has been changed since I transitioned, and now that you no longer require a medical diagnosis to be trans, it is also not a diagnosis that'd make you excempt from the military.

So the finnish government basically just said "if you're a grown man with nothing wrong with you, then you're a grown man with nothing wrong with you. Now grab this fucking gun and do your duty for fatherland."

It's interesting how the same Jews that were systematically murdered by Europeans for their ethnicity, magically became European colonizers when they rebuilt their own country in their historic homeland so they won't get murdered.

According to the antisemites cosplaying as human rights activists.

You know, the ones who are currently silent about the Druze, Christians and Alawites being murdered, raped and taken into slavery by islamists in Syria.

Unlike them, Israeli people are not silent and the Israeli government is helping them - the wounded Syrian Druze are being treated in Israeli hospitals right now, the IDF is actively backing up the minorities in Syria & preventing the terrorists from massacaring them, Israelis are raising money to send to families that were harmed.

Meanwhile, the "peace activists" are like "haha there is a fire in Israel lol hope they all die"

There are people who risk their life to save lives and there are people who don't have a life because they are too busy wishing death upon others. Supporting terrorists is the perfect activity for the latter.

I used to write theories and shit. I remember drawing a graph to explain my time travel theories about some purple dude that were too complex for me to explain with words. But now I am this

forever impressed by people who when they're hyperfixating on a media or character come up with complex headcanons and analysis and make up scenarios with them. all my brain does is this for days on end

Grian be like:

If there's one thing that humanizes me to my fellow productive member of society, it's that I love a good button. Elevators, jukeboxes, medical equipment: if you make a quality button, I will push the hell out of it. I've bought tons of things on impulse, just because the buttons were of a high quality.

What that device is does not really matter to me. Like I just said, I'll buy anything if it's satisfying to push. And lots of high-quality, expensive stuff just... isn't. There's no excuse for why your hugely pricey stereo system feels worse to jab your finger into than any given Fisher-Price toddler toy.

I didn't know much about buttons at all when I was a kid. Just took them for granted, like you do for so many other things: gravity, breathable air, the option for grandpa to hide you from family services when they start wondering why your mom and dad are off auditioning for the circus again instead of feeding you. Buttons, though, have a long and fascinating history. And you won't read about it here, because we have things to do.

So if you're about to throw something away that has a satisfying button on it, pry that button out and keep it. You'll wish you had it the next time you encounter something with a button that sucks. And it's not like the police can really get you for "vandalism" just because you pried out that bullshit touch screen from your apartment elevator and crammed a nice Otis part in there. At least, not if you do a good enough job of wiring.

I was sad because I finished watching daredevil: born again and read almost all the fanfiction (you do not understand. If a fic is good, and isn't frank/matt or another ship I dislike, I read it. If a fic is bad, I probably read half of it.) but then I remembered I can read the comics. I have so much daredevil to read. So much of this stupid man who makes bad decisions but is so complicated. Yes it is stupid that you aren't telling your girlfriend that you are daredevil after all the things that happened with Foggy and Karen, but I get why he does that. Incredible.

מה??? אני הולכת בירושלים, חיה את החיים, ופתאום נופל עליי חול מצינור שיורד מאחד הבניינים. אבל רגע. זה לא חול. אולי נסורת? לא. זה קמח מצה. ועכשיו יש לי קמח מצה בעיניים. הצילו

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Meatball menu? That's horrible. I love it

It is insane to me that timestamps are optional on this webbed site. A major context clue is just opt in so I’ll reblog something from four years ago and people think it’s happening right just now like babe. Enable your timestamps. Why are you stumbling through the world with one eye closed?

So i Got a freecard to draw anything I wanted in art. I was thinking Bucky, but I have this big piece in mind, and I don’t have the time for it. So Muse it is!!!