#Bruce Degen

[friendraichu]

Bruce Degen, Who Drew ‘The Magic School Bus,’ Dies at 79

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/obituaries/bruce-degen-dead.html

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP BPC || January 4 || What Got You Into Reading: I can't remember a time before I loved books. Before stories. I can only thank my parents for encouraging this love and for indulging me for just one more chapter night after night!

[tigresslanzhu]

Kowtow

[New Moon Pajama Party. Meena steps out wearing her new Sailor Moon pajamas]

Meena: Artica, wha…?

Artica: [kneeling down to her knees and tapping her forehead to the floor in front of Meena] It’s a kowtow, Meena-Chan! You’re royalty at this point! I have to show you my undying respect!

Nooshy: [Shoveling goldfish in her mouth] No, Meena, she’s doin’ that ‘We’re not worthy’ thing and just giving it a more official name. She’s obviously obsessed with you!

Artica: Mr. Moon, please tell me you have a book on Chinese History I can use to prove to you all I’m telling the truth!

[tonictransistor]

Sorry Kylo, I saw The Flash and now I'm on my Sugar Daddy Bruce Wayne kick again

[thezombiegeekinthehawaiianshirt]

[dontbesoweirdkira]

Warnings: Yandere/obsession, power dynamics, creep! Dick Grayson, creep!Barbra Gordon, mentions of implied harassment, dark themes.

A/N: Just thinking about how fucked up it'd be living in the Manor with those hunger crazed lions..(aka horny and obsessed young adults) I need to get this drabble off of my chest. I wrote this open enough so that whatever relation you choose to have to the Batfam is your choice.

Bruce's current lover? Poor uni student who was offered to stay at the manor by one of the many batbrats? Adult bat-sis who's at their wits end? That's your business..

and it doesn't matter because the stalking, the constant harassment masked as "affection", the insane power dynamics and fear tactics...it's all enough to drive anyone mad,,and it's made worse by the fact they are constantly treating you like the family's very own Barbie doll. You're pushed and grabbed and expected to go along with any and every fucked up role-play scenario that they've conjured up.

The mansion feels like a dollhouse, you know the kind that's cut in half so all rooms are on display so you can monitor all your dollies at the same time? Yeah, just like that. You feel stripped of any ounce of privacy or security, even in your bedroom (which you've checked hundreds of times for listening devices and cameras...or a very lost Wayne adoptee hiding under your bed) felt invaded.

You could be locked in a tight storage closet and despite being certain that you were completely alone and away from everyone, you still wouldn't be able to shake the eerie feeling that you were still exposed and vulnerable. Somehow you still felt like you were on display for them to monitor like a doll.

The last straw had to be while you were taking a shower. Despite the family's usual degenerative behaviors, there seemed to be a silent rule to not go into your room unless you were away. Probably for plausible deniability that your missed placed items and gut feeling that someone's been tampering around your room is all in your head...since you've never caught anyone in the act.

Regardless you would lock your bedroom doors, windows and the door leading into your bathroom (even at times barricading them) just to prevent any unwanted visitors...

Admittedly though, you did get startled because just a few minutes after stepping into the running water, you started to hear faint noises from outside your door before going silent only moments later.

The sound was muted and ambiguous enough for you not to fully panic. There were many possible and reasonable explanations for what you just heard. The manor was excellently well constructed, yes, but it was still an old building nonetheless. There were times where you could hear things from far away or rattling in the ventilation system that sounded like it was closer to you than it actually was. Not to mention, no home was exempt from an occasional "ghostly haunting".

You continued scrubbing the deliciously scented shampoo into your scalp and blocked out any worries that tried to anxiously crawl its way into your mind.

As it was time to rise, water ran through out your hair down your body taking all the leftover suds with it.

Suddenly your ears perked up to another sound.

You held your breath for a second to hone in on it to make sure it was just the same one from earlier.

It wasn't.

...there was almost like a sliding sound, close to what a desk drawer would make when you pull it...then what sounded like rustling of clothes, papers, and things on your vanity.

Your heart dropped and your entire body went into a catatonic like state. There's no way someone was actually in your room right now. There seriously couldn't be, your doors were securely locked. You knew it, your constant paranoia caused you to triple check them and then once more for good measure. And out of all the times, why did they choose the one you were completely nude and defenseless? Was this planned? Some sick kind of power play? Did they know you'd be far too petrified to storm out of that bathroom with only a skimpy towel wrapped loosely around your chest and half-empty shampoo bottle to confront them with?

If you didn't think that the feeling of being vulnerably exposed could become all the more suffocating, you were greatly mistaken. Whoever it was that's rummaging through your room and taking full advantage of your helplessness , hit a new all time low.

Fortunately they stayed relatively distant from the bathroom for a while. It didn't appear that they had any interest in whatever you were doing in the bathroom, only to find whatever they were searching for..then leave out before you were done.

The identity of the perpetrator was still unbeknownst to you before they started inaudibly whispering. Well,,more like low talking than whispering, they didn't care enough to fully prevent their voice from being heard by you,,, The voice was feminine yet had a sense of authority...? irritation....? It wasn't exactly clear but the tone was reminiscent of a teacher demanding a student to do,,,or rather not to do something..

It had to be Babs..or..maybe it was Cass?..You weren't positive as when they were both upset, their voice was kind of similar.

The movement of things presumably being displaced or stolen stopped and another voice spoke back to the other. This one sounded masculine with a hint of immaturity in their voice.

Each minute that passed, their voices became louder and louder, clearly an aggravated disagreement had broken out.

The intensity of the atmosphere from your bedroom, seeped through the cracks of the door and flooded the bathroom.. You listened intently trying to get any ounce of clarity as to what they could've possibly been upset over.. If the circumstances had been different, you might've laughed at the absurdity of them fighting over one of your socks or a used tissue..

Even with their voices becoming increasingly louder, and all the more heated...it stayed mostly inaudible, no thanks to the running water and your unstable state that made it a bit harder to process what was really going on..

The only thing you could make out were a few words but nothing that made sense when you tried piecing them together.

The room eventually fell silent again..only for a beat. You thought maybe they'd come to terms with whatever it was that riled them until the masculine voice spoke up again..

This time you could understand him clearly as his voice was all of a sudden alarmingly close to the bathroom door..

"...It's fine..a little peak is fine..."

I don't even need to explain the amount of sheer horror that swept through your body and caused your heart to pound. The two voices were bickering about whether they should open the door to your bathroom or not.. You knew the people that you lived with well enough to know that they were notorious for pushing boundaries and then some just to see what they could extort out of you..but this??

Being only seconds away from being violated,,,possibly traumatized as well for a cherry on top was more than enough to sink a pit in your stomach.. You recognized the voice to be Dick's, and even though all the people you lived with were all just as creepy, he was a different level of disgusting. The only one who says weird things, while doing even wilder things, all with the most beautiful smile you've ever seen. The patterned shower curtain wasn't enough to protect you from him them.. getting a peak would mean pushing past the curtain..and pushing past the curtain would turn into...

fuck. You needed to do something, anything to try and protect yourself but your body couldn't move..

The door knob started being fiddled with. Turning and pulling, Dick was trying to see if the door might've been unlocked.

"Shit. Where did you put that lock pick at?"

The irony.

"Come on, maybe this is going a bit far.." Barbra spoke with

Scoffing would be an under-reaction to that statement.

You didn't need to see him to know the desperation Dick exuded when he finally found the lock pick. The sound of it being shoved into the door pierced through your chest and struck your spine. The hairs on your body stood pin straight, and goosebumps cascaded down your entire body tightening your skin..

"Didn't you say you wanted to do this before? This is our chance."

"Yeah...."

"But...? Aren't you just a little bit curious...? We're just looking. Nothing more..we're not going to touch her.." It was unnerving the way he said those last lines..almost as if he was trying to convince himself more than Barbra.

Tears started to swell your eyes as they both got closer to opening the door and laying their eyes on the lewd sight in front of them..eagerly you kept trying to snap yourself out of it's shocked state. Even the water's warmth had turned into a chilling temperature.. in only something you could describe as the house's cynical way at confirming your impending doom... but the only movement you managed to accomplish was to violently shake..

come, on..move..

your towel is right there, just grab it.

please,,,just fucking move.

Dick had finished cracking the lock and his hand grabbed onto the door handle and twisted it slightly...

"....we just..we need to plan this out better. It's too risky, with Bruce being home. We can't manipulate our way out of this one, not after what was found on Tim's computer..."

There was a long pause before an exasperated sigh was let out.

"..."

"..fine...we'll wait until B takes his trip.." His words gritted out like venom behind his teeth, he meant what he said.

No words were exchanged after that but you could still sense their presence. Dick kept his hand tightly wrapped around the door knob, doing everything in his power not to go through with his desires at the moment. And as much as Babs played the devil's advocate, for a moment, she wanted him to open that door too..

You weren't sure how long they were still standing there in silence, debating their actions before they finally left, you were long disassociated by then.

They were gone but not the damage that they caused. You've never felt so disgusted and dehumanized in your entire life. You weren't a human being to them only a doll. They're far more concerned with Bruce's judgment than your dignity. They couldn't care less that you know that they are going to try to violate you again, and exactly when...Bruce doesn't believe hearsay..and the thought of having to see their faces after this made your blood boil.

[im-lost-in-ikea]

sponsored by my last bat family chronic illness cross over doing well

a ranking of how bad I think the batfamilys spines are, from best to worse.

1. Alfred- Have you seen my guys posture. My God.

2. Duke- He's a newer edition, not an athlete in any crazy sports, my guys spine is probably average.

3. Jason- I can only assume any problems were reset in the pit, and also Alfred DRILLED proper posture into him, and no one can tell me otherwise.

4. Cassandra- I have no good thoughts here just. It's Cass. I feel like her training has to have wreaked a little bit of havoc, but overall I feel like she's perfect and special and so so fine.

5. Damian- He's so young, doing so much. Like his spines not fully developed and he's just jumping and fighting.

6. Steph- idk she might be lower on the list but. SHE GAVE BIRTH. WAS TORTURED. girls spine is screwed.

7. Bruce- He old. Degenerative disk disease is coming for him.

8. Tim- that man spends so much time bent over a computer. The curves of that man's spine. And then you add on the training? Oh and also that one time he fell out of a window. And no spleen like idk how but that's gotta do smth.

9. Dick- hes done gymnastics at an Olympic level since the age of like two. The havoc??? Guys I skate like badly and have only done so for a few years, and I randomly found out I have two old fractures in my spine. Can you imagine what he's got going on?

[mollywog]

5 Favorite Books

Thank you for the tag @firawren

Rules: Make a poll with 5 of your favorite books and let your followers vote on which one best matches your vibe.

From a selection of children’s books:

Tagging. @mega-aulover @distractionsfromthefood @oenothera5 @peetapatgoesmyheart @annoyinglyvague

[celebrateeachnewday]

Artist Bruce Degen

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

Internet keep making memes and disgusting theories about Jamie Foxx appearance while he is dealing with serious health issues, they need to leave him alone! I remember when they made fun of Selena Gomez's appearance when she was dealing with a severe flare of lupus. And, the saddest case, how the internet treated Chadwick Boseman and only stopped when he died. +

+ As someone who battles daily with two incurable degenerative diseases, I wish from the bottom of my heart that Jamie and his family will recover after this difficult moment. Those people who don't respect his health situation need to go to hell.

__________

You're so right nonny!!! I really wish people would be more respectful. Like I know that Jamie Foxx is a very talented actor but I feel like there was more respect given to Bruce Willis and his aphasia you know? I don't know maybe its my perception of it but I really think that white people get more sympathy when sick than people of color. The term for this is the empathy gap and its talked about in this video in a piece of media that everyone knows about.

anyways I really think this happens alot not just fictional media but also news media.

Sending you prayers and good wishes Nonny! I hope you have a good support system. *hugs*

mod ali

[princesssarisa]

Character ask: Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus)

Favorite thing about them: She's quirky, joyful, adventurous, and exciting, with a seemingly endless array of talents, yet she's kind and caring too, and a good teacher whose unusual methods make learning fun. She's an excellent character all around.

Least favorite thing about them: Well, she sometimes puts her students in scary situations, though she always succeeds in protecting them from real danger.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I'm a single female.

*I'm fun-loving.

*I'm well-educated and enjoy learning.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I'm not a teacher.

*I don't drive.

*I'm less of a thrill-seeker than she is.

Favorite line: Her catchphrase – "Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!"

brOTP: Her students, Liz the lizard, and since it so often seems to be sentient, the Bus.

OTP: None; she's had flirtations, like with Phoebe's former teacher Mr. Seedplot, but she's happily single.

nOTP: Any of her students.

Random headcanon: While I don't ascribe to the fan theory that she's a grown-up transgender Arnold gone back in time, I do think that like Arnold, she's Jewish or at least half-Jewish. I've read several articles now by Jewish writers who praise her for being a heroic role model character with typically "Jewish" features – i.e. frizzy red hair and a prominent hooked nose – too often reserved for nerds or villains. (And who complain that the reboot, The Magic School Bus Rides Again, replaces her with her sister, whose looks comply more with Waspy beauty standards.) While you can't know someone's ethnicity just from stereotypical features, the fact that so many Jewish viewers proudly claim her as one of their own makes me glad to do the same.

Unpopular opinion: I don't think I have one.

Song I associate with them: The show's theme song.

Favorite picture of them:

Two from Bruce Degen's original book illustrations:

And from the cartoon series:

[spacefinch]

Some of my favorite children's book illustrators:

Carolyn Bracken (illustrator of several Magic School Bus picture books)

Ian Falconer (Olivia)

Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad)

Richard Scarry

Ted Enik (several Magic School Bus chapter books)

John Speirs (more Magic School Bus books)

Meredith Hamilton (A Child's Introduction to the Night Sky)

Eric Carle

Jan Brett

Kevin Henkes

Beatrix Potter

Shel Silverstein

Tony DiTerlizzi (The Search for WondLa)

Bruce Degen (the original Magic School Bus books)

Graeme Base (Animalia and The Eleventh Hour)

Jon J. Muth

David Weisner

Janell Cannon (Stellaluna)

Helen Oxbury (We're Going on a Bear Hunt)

Lane Smith (The Happy Hocky Family!)

Virginia Lee Burton (Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel)

John Klassen (I Want My Hat Back)

Mark Teague

Dr. Seuss

Mo Willems

Peter Reynolds

There's so many amazing illustrators out there. Where would we all be without their talent?

children’s book illustrators r literally the cornerstone of society im not kidding. where would we be w/o that little business worm in the apple car or the brambly hedge animals making their feasts and flying their kites like literally WHERE  . do not even get me started on frog and toad 

[landlordrecords]

This was meant to be in a book, but I believe the book isn't happening now...

CON-DOM

How Welcome Is Death To I Who Have Nothing More To Do But Die

Tesco Organisation TESCO 102 (CD/2LP, 2016)

Don’t look (away)

Mike Dando’s English power electronics project CON-DOM reached its zenith with this gruelling comeback mic drop, exploring the protracted, undignified death of his mother.

The snazzily grim booklet for How Welcome Is Death features photographs chronicling Nora’s obvious suffering, under the yoke of the miserably attritive-sounding Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. An incurable neurological condition, it did for Dudley Moore and Peter Sarstedt and, at the time of writing, is gnawing at Linda Ronstadt. In short, this situation is far from the quirky world of 2023 film Quiz Lady’s rebellious care home prison-breaker.

While leftfield artists Hannah Peel and Ian William Craig have dealt extensively with relatives’ degenerative illnesses, power electronics is the ideal setting for examining the brutal physical and psychological effects of these conditions on patients and their families. They have been referenced in PE before, but How Welcome Is Death is the genre’s heart-on-the-sleeve statement on the subject. Dando credits the influence of Atrax Morgue in the sleeve notes. However, the album’s more direct ancestor is US noisers Macronympha’s legendary Bananafish interview, wherein Joseph Roemer shared photos of his dying father, and talked about having the latter’s life support turned off. It also reminds us of John King’s Shipman-skewering novel White Trash (‘He did not know what to say to this walking skeleton, felt sick just looking at him’); and of the astute closing sections of Nick Tosches’ Dino, wherein Dean Martin drifts in and out of lucidity during palliative care.

For PE, How Welcome Is Death is the equivalent of a late career classic rock album. As Bruce Springsteen and Loudon Wainwright III matured in their navigation of life’s stages, so did Dando, for whom the album is akin to his own Transformer Man, as he holds hands with Neil Young and peers under the tree canopy dappling their loved ones’ ability to communicate. A lot of time and a lot of life had elapsed between 1984’s Calling All Aryans and 2016:1 as Noise Receptor zine put it, How Welcome Is Death holds ‘a mirror up to the fallacy of the oft faux celebration of strength and the overt obsession with death that preoccupies so much of the post-industrial underground’. What else was Dando going to address in his transgressive art, when the worst horrors faced him at home?

The medicinally bitter taste of British national treasure Clive Dunn’s anodyne 1970 novelty hit Grandad begins How Welcome Is Death, before bleeding into the wounded feedback and Maurizio Bianchi-style rumbles of the first of the album’s lengthier pieces (which are interspersed with brief field recordings from Dando’s mother’s care setting, a TV dumbly blaring throughout). In Living Death, Dando imagines his mother’s thoughts on her predicament: “I have come to this.” The title track is written from a similar perspective, but moves from the minutiae of care towards Nora’s thoughts of loneliness and death after the loss of her husband: “No point with him gone.” We don’t know how much comes from real conversations and how much is imagined, but it all rings true.

The first act concludes with one of two presumably surreptitious recordings of Nora’s roommate, Sarah, adding ‘colour’ while demonstrating the unappealing, unsane, unacceptable conditions for patients in the underfunded UK care sector. They also beg questions regarding the ethics of their inclusion. One imagines Nora was unaware of her son’s project, but it was initiated by someone who would be regarded as having her ‘best interests’ at heart. This cannot be said for Sarah, much as she or her loved ones will probably never be aware of her

cameo. Those whose naked photographs are viewed by paedophiles are considered violated, regardless of whether they are aware of the abuse, but on the other hand images made of mental patients without informed consent have positively influenced that sector. Albert Maisel’s disturbing Bedlam 1946 Time photographic series, regarding two US state hospitals,came complete with leading captions such as ‘despair’, ‘forced labor’, and ‘neglect’. It led to much pearl-clutching and determination to do better: rulesbent in extreme circumstances. Whatever one makes of the record, it is clearly not meant as entertainment or prurience; rather, it is Dando’s cry of pain on behalf of two helpless old ladies.

The second act begins with How Welcome Is Death’s centrepiece, Chocolates, which reads like a mixture of the personal histories which the healthcare system cruelly punishes families into repeatedly giving; and Nora’s suicide note. Dando is clearly spoken here, the case history crisply laid out on clean white hospital sheets. T4 then steps outside Dando’s immediate situation, referencing the Nazi scheme of involuntarily euthanising the incurably sick. The booklet mirrors his family’s situation with that of a family under the Nazis, pleading for a mercy killing, while the Office of Racial Policy issues posters questioning the point of keeping the sick alive.

The third and final act abruptly switches to Dando’s own perspective, opening with the grinding Just Fuckin’ Die (the ‘hit single’), in which he is uncompromisingly honest about his own feelings on the state in which illness has left his mother. Dando is thoroughly humane (he was with his mother in her dying days, after all), but there are no sugar-coated memories of good times here; just a husk, a man at the end of his tether. And so to the inevitable elegy: the alien, windswept, near-instrumental Ending (Nora). One thinks of the drum and bass maverick Goldie, playing his hour-long composition Mother while visiting his mum in the chapel of rest.

For British listeners, if the album started with Dunn, then it must end with future Fall member Julia Nagle, alongside future actresses Sally Lindsay and Jennifer Hennessy, on 1980’s inane school choral travesty There’s No One Quite Like Grandma. Degenerative illnesses do not only affect the elderly (as per the book and film Still Alice), but Dando questions the tone and content of Britain’s most beloved paeans to them. If the album had been recorded a few years later, nonagenarian pandemic celeb Captain Tom’s hit could have featured, his not-so-dulcet tones standing in for Sarah’s anguished cries.

The falling apart of the sainted NHS. The systematic deaths of the UK care sector (Crass’ “System, system, system/Death in life”). The ashamed thoughts of “This sinner”. Swearing at and rejecting carers, like Anthony Hopkins in The Father. The interplay between love and hate; love and duty. “How welcome her death to I.” An old lady, soiled, fallen on her bedroom floor, head cracked open, crying “Kill me”. Wee. Poo. Pads. Accidents. Catheters. Puckered flesh. Wee. Poo. “My arse hurts.” Reality and Codeine dreams merged: “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.” “I want to go home”; “You are home”. All of that which came before corroded and forgotten. Exhaustion. Waiting. Death? How welcome.

d foist

[tigresslanzhu]

Your friendly reminder that each “Classic” Magic School Bus book has at least one cuter than cute illustration of the kids.

Particularly of Phil and/or Wanda.

Although it also makes me wish that Carmen had been part of the series too.

We love you, Bruce Degen!

[goalhofer]

2024 in memoriam (part 41)

Elwood Edwards; Jr., 74

(Basil) Ben Baldanza; Jr., 62

Andrzej Hachuła, 64

Charlie Turner, 79

Fr. Johannes Beutler, 91

Bishop Pablo León Hakimian, 70

Bishop Philippe Nkiere Keana, 86

Don Bosseler, 88

Charles Geerts, 81

Marie-Madeleine Riffaud, 100

Tony Todd, 69

Bishop Louis Edward Gélineau, 96

Bruce Degen, 79

Nitin Chauhaan, 35

Ana Lajusticia, 100

Betty Bausch-Polak, 105

Roz Hervey, 58

Marty Kuehnert, 78

George Lehmann, 83

June Spencer Brocksom, 105

Virginia Stroud, 73

Brian Wheeler, 62

Archbishop Jean-Marie Untaani Compaoré, 91

Archbishop James Patrick Keleher, 93

Ella Jenkins, 100

Prof. Barbara Aland, 87

Paul Caponigro, 91

Dick Kercher, 92

Karl Koepfer, 90

Arnold Oss; Jr., 96

[pleasantspark]

How mature.

Hello. I'm a victim of CSA (CoCSA) and you've lost the right to criticize me and call me out for pointing out something the fandom refuses to actually admit.

There was a whole Bruce Wayne speech I did but Tumblr put out the flames TLDR

You're all degens who insist the game has plot whrn the plot is PornHub Levels of Atrocity. Instead of ignoring my post you come on my blog insult my Mother (which doesn't hurt me it hurts you more) and call me *checks notes* pretentious?

Really? Pretentious for stating the obvious that the Fandom only engages with said content because of the induced? They really wanted incest so bad that they threy a fit when N pushed back Chapter 3. Y'all are so entitled.

Also it would've been better if a warning screen and a "I don't condone screen" was in the game. But no, we don't get any of that. Save me the it's fictional bs. It's only ever fictional whenever it's convenient and until the same people are outted as nounces.

@supercalloutfragilistic has proof of people in Animation Community being weirdos and making "Fictional" shit. Cry me a river. You only fucking found my post intentionally bc there was no way you could find it because I don't post in the main tags anymore LMFAOOO