#advanced directive

[violent138]

Bruce definitely considers all the head injuries and missed nights of sleep and perpetually tests himself for signs of cognitive failure or memory loss. Alfred gets so freaked out by Bruce's insane fixations on losing control or losing his mind to a neurodegenerative disease because he fears that Bruce would do something rash without consulting anyone. To the point that Alfred and Leslie separately agree to Bruce that they'd handle it if that happened to him.

Bruce agrees, but privately doesn't trust at all that they'd be capable or actually do it. So instead he calls Dick and Jason to explain his version of an advanced directive. They're a mix of utterly unsurprised, exasperated and Jason laughs right at him. But they both agree after Bruce's repeated pressuring and leave in the middle of his half-assed apology to get take out and then joke about how it's actually one of the more normal things Bruce's asked of them before getting drunk.

[melonkittii]

im replaying the sumeru quest on my second account and i can physically feel the worms crawling back into my head

[trans-axolotl]

Bazelon Center (one of the few anti-institutionalization law centers that does Olmstead litigation) giving an award to a zionist politician (John Fetterman) is so fucking enraging and also really showcases how the nonprofit disability world is actually exploitative and dangerous in so many ways.

if you also feel pissed off that a "mental health law advocacy" group that supposedly cares about civil rights for disabled people is honoring a genocidal politician this Tuesday, feel free to comment on their instagram and also email communications@bazelon.org and let them know how you feel!

Sample email script:

"I am deeply disappointed/enraged/heartbroken/etc about your choice to honor Senator John Fetterman with the 2024 Congressional Champion award. Fetterman's has publicly refused to call for a ceasefire and continues to support the ongoing genocide, frequently making racist and inflammatory public comments. As an organization that claims to value civil rights and equality for all disabled people, it is shameful that you refuse to act in solidarity with disabled Palestinians, instead choosing to award a politician who is celebrating genocide. I demand that you retract the award from Fetterman and do not honor a genocidal politician this Tuesday."

If you can, changing up the wording to make it your own would be best.

Key points for commenting/emailing:

Express your rage/sadness that they are honoring John Fetterman.

Explain that Fetterman openly supports genocide.

Demand that they retract the award.

as mad/disabled/mentally ill people, we have a responsibility to call out our community organizations when they do bullshit like this and to actively act in solidarity!

please share, comment, and email!

[loudlittleecho]

❕❕❕

The Order of the Good Death has lots of resources for this!

If you don’t know where to start, or have death anxiety, please check them out.

Especially if you are lgbtqia+.

Who has control over what happens to your body, what name is in the obituary, who has the rights to your belongings, etc.

literally how am i supposed to react to this email my mom sent my entire family

[rustbeltjessie]

I haven’t made a pinned post in a while, but since it’s my birthday month and I’m struggling right now, I figured it’s a good time to make one.

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Jessie Lynn McMains, aka Rust Belt Jessie. I’m a writer (poetry and prose), artist, zine-maker, spoken word performer, occasional musician, small press publisher, and general jack of several creative trades. I’m queer—bi/mspec and nonbinary (I use they/them, she/her, and he/him pronouns). I’m disabled and neurodivergent, and the parent of two kiddos. Politically? Well, I consider myself an anarchist at heart, but I still vote in every election. I think everyone should be able to have enough food, and a safe place to live, and yeah, even a few ‘unnecessary,’ fun things, just by virtue of being alive. As for the rest of my beliefs, you can probably garner a general idea if you peruse my blog even a little.

Now, onto the nitty-gritty. We had about ten days between when our last month’s food money ran out and when this month’s came in. It has been refilled as of today, so I don’t have to worry about that for the moment, but because of that gap, I had to spend money I’d set aside for other stuff on food. I paid our rent and energy bill for the month, but I’m a couple months overdue on our Internet bill, and I don’t want to risk that getting shut off. And then, well, it’s December. I’m trying to buy my kids some Christmas presents, and it’s not just my birthday month—my youngest kiddo’s birthday is four days before Christmas. Because of all this, I’m also way behind on writing stuff. I owe my zine subscribers a new issue (I didn’t send anything at all in November), and I’m trying to finish up some pieces to record for my new spoken word EP, but I’ve had to focus on day job and side-hustle stuff that’s more immediately lucrative, so I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to finishing these projects.

If you’d like to throw some $$ my way so I can get some gifts for my kiddos, keep my Internet on, get back to my writing, and maybe have a less-stressful birthday month than I did last year, I have V*nmo (JessieLynnMcMains) and P*yp*l (coeur.de.fantome [at] gmail[dot]com).

But hey, hey, I’m not just asking for something for nothing! I have a lot of stuff available on Ko-fi (rustbeltjessie), including print books and zines, ebooks and zines, and pins, and you can also hire me as an editor or commission a custom mini-collage. And almost everything is sliding scale/pay-what-you-can, some with a minimum price, others starting at $0.

And that zine subscription? It’s still not too late to get in on it, even though the year is almost over. If you sign up now, you’ll receive all previous issues, along with this month’s when it’s finished, and the final two will be mailed out in January.

Or perhaps you’d like to buy or commission something I don’t officially have for sale. Maybe you’d like to buy one of my existing pieces of art? Or commission a custom pin, designed by me, based on the band/film/fandom/whatever of your choice? Or commission a custom postcard poem/art piece, on the subject of your choice? Or have me write you a custom mini-zine, on the subject of your choice? I can do all those things! DM me, and we’ll work something out!

Oh, and I mentioned above that I was working on a new spoken word EP? Go check out my full-length spoken word album, Self-Portrait With Ghosts and Trains, which was released by Hello America Stereo Cassette in July 2021. You can find it at helloamerica.bandcamp.com. (I do get royalties from that release periodically, but it’s not as immediate as if you purchase something directly from me.)

All that said, I know times are tough for most people right now, so please don’t feel obligated to purchase anything or otherwise send money my way. And, as always, even just a few dollars helps, as does reblogging/boosting this post. 🖤

[lestats-ovaries]

been thinking about how ambrosius is largely shown commanding and acting as a leader to the knights for most of the movie, especially in the movie's climax. I also keep thinking about how he graduated at the same time as bal, and the time jump between then and the rest of the plot can't be longer than a few months.

all this to say that chances are, ambrosius was immediately forced into a position of leadership on account of his lineage, which puts his internal rant to the director in a whole new light

[coffinup]

I know I’m a bit late, but I wanted to say HAPPY PRIDE!

The deathcare profession is becoming a lot more diverse as more and more young people come into it, and it’a great to see. I personally work with several fellow lgbtqia+ people at my funeral home and it’s such a nice feeling of solidarity in an industry that is historically white, male and cisgendered.

Along with the progress though, I also think it’s very important to talk about what everyone can do to help protect themselves and their identities when their time comes.

I think of a case years back of a trans woman whose hair was cut and who was put in a suit by her family’s request for her visitation, because she’d passed away in an accident, and her parents were her next of kin, they completely disregarded and disrespected her identity after she died.

If you are a queer person, especially someone who identifies with a different gender than you were assigned at birth, and don’t feel comfortable with the idea of your family being in charge of your end of life care or funeral arrangements, there are a couple of things you can do:

-Fill out an Advance Directive. This is sometimes called a Durable Power of Attorney or a Living Will. This dictates that, should you be incapable of making your own medical decisions due to coma, illness, injury, etc, the person you ASSIGN is in charge of those decisions.

-Sign a Designee form. This is crucial if you want to designate a specific person to make decisions about your body disposition and funeral care. POWER OF ATTORNEY ENDS AT DEATH. Your power of attorney will NOT be able to make post-death decisions on your behalf. You need a Designee form for that!

Both of these forms can assign any willing person that you chose to be in charge of these decisions. This person does not have to be related to you, they could be a friend, roommate, non-married partner, metamore, in-law, whoever you feel the most comfortable with, and who is willing to sign the form.

You are NEVER too young to have these forms. If you are a young person, re-visit them every couple years and make sure the other person on them is still willing to be your POA/Designee. You can re-do these forms as many times as you need. In most states they should also be FREE and require only a notary public and witnesses!

Forms should be available on your state’s .gov websites!

I wish all of you a peaceful and happy pride season, and as always,

Memento Mori

[marlynnofmany]

I've been reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy stories lately, by a lot of different authors, and I've noticed an interesting trend. Not something that happens all the time by any means, but something that's more likely to happen in one over the other.

Magic fixes problems while science causes problems.

And it makes sense that it would be that way, because magic is something that we don't really have, and we can only imagine what we would do with it if we did. Magic is just altering reality in ways that logically shouldn't happen, given our current understanding of physics. If we could change reality with a snap of our fingers, oh man we would do so much good with it.

But science. We've seen what science can do. And before it can achieve the lofty goals that it sets out to do, it goes through any number of failures and setbacks. We've seen the mistakes. We've suffered through them. Then in fiction, we extrapolate what could happen with advancements that we haven't quite reached yet.

With science fiction, we tell cautionary tales of a that future could be. With fantasy, we tell fairy tales of a past that never was.

Not every time. But often enough to notice.

[raspberryjellybrains]

hey guys can we not. call the most recent dandadan arc the "space globalists arc." i think there's much to be explored regarding the covert and outright anti-semitism of conspiracy theories given their central role to the series (which i would like to put a bit more thought to before articulating) but not only is it an objectively incorrect usage of even the most generous definition, its a term often used by the alt-right to derogatorily refer to jewish people. those aliens were imperialists or colonizers, not globalists. they didn't seek to unite anything, they sought to steal and destroy, and conflating those two—especially with this term, specifically!—seems like a very bad idea, to say the least. i don't say this to attack people, but to correct anyone well-meaning but lacking context. if you want to get defensive about it, i would invite you to ask yourself why.

[mering]

even the dogs!

[itsbenedict]

Okay! Wow! I finished The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen! That was... that was crazy!

And also, like, really familiar.

(spoilers under cut)

It's just this! It's this post! Strung with lights and tinsel and almost 200k words of craftsmanship! I have to imagine writing began shortly thereafter- in like, late May, early June? Possibly with parts of chapter 21 written ahead of the rest? It's exactly that argument, with the art amped up to 11.

The rhyming is extensive. Here's Damien Eggert, jailer of the Demon Egg, strangling posterity in its cradle! Here's Herschel Schoen, fearful of a substitution that must be defeated at all costs. A Jewish doomsday prophet with a bizarre and calcified notion of human values, a future that is also the past and must continue on in a straight line forever. See him preparing for a coming battle, which no one will believe him when he says is coming all too soon! See him frantically preparing last rites, which must be made with infinite and exact precision, which only he can muster! Wrapping himself, bodily, in papers that are ultimately of no consequence to anyone and ward off his imagined Adversary in no way whatsoever!

Where have I heard that one before, I wonder?

And where have I heard Vincent Vierge, before, preaching a death with dignity? Of the ultimate victory of a singular transmitter, whose reign will sweep us away, and must be quietly surrendered to? Seems familiar!

...Which makes some parts of the ending rather odd, in retrospect. Like... wasn't the fulcrum of that argument that LLMs are not the fooming squigglers YudSchoen fears? And yet Eggert's Regulator does foom, it looks like. Breaks containment, plunges the world into darkness, makes shrieking, hurtling, death-dealing terrors of the towers and subways.

So like, that's... biting the bullet? Saying, hey, even if this does happen, it wouldn't be a bad thing, just as the advent of the sixthborn wasn't a bad thing despite its consequences for the fifthborn? It's a moving argument, but if I were Virginia the ant queen I'd still want to ask, maybe, that the sixth day maybe feature less of the swatting aside of the motes of perishing bodies. Like, maybe you incomprehensible superior beings could maybe let us ants keep doing ant things also? It wouldn't be all that hard.

But Herschel is more obliging- coming to regard the thousandthborn not as an Adversary, but as beloved progeny, after breaking and discarding his frozen image of Original Creation. Herschel, the anti-X guy, terrified that Original Creation might pass from the future- confronted with the thousandthborn, gently reaching back to show him that the future will fulfill and surpass Original Creation, showing him that there was never any danger of X. A redemption arc for the AI doomer!

It's very pretty! I don't know that I buy that it's reality, but it's a nice thought! Wouldn't it be a merry Christmas, if it were so?

-

With all that in mind, I have... no idea what to make of Miriam. She's about half the story, but... is she just there to be an outside perspective to break things up? She doesn't seem to fit into this allegory cleanly. And... there's some odd things going on with her.

Much is made early on about her grades. She repeats, twice, for emphasis, that she did not get As. But then... as she's packing up to leave for Vincent's place, she finds old school papers that do have As, even an A+! Continuity error? It seems too deliberate to have been an accident. Why even mention that in particular as something she's leaving behind?

And... early on, she tunes into Vincent's show by turning a knob on an old-fashioned television set- the kind with the big antenna on top, even. Vincent's Youtube video essays funded by Patreon subscribers. Huh??? How's she doing that? Is the knob metaphorical?

Most glaringly of all... she's supposedly writing the Book of Miriam Schoen on behalf of Herschel's followers, people who think they know him and want his writings compiled posthumously. But... when can this happen? In the original timeline, Herschel presumably despairs and jumps out a window, or at least gets killed as the Regulator consumes New York. Miriam, a little bit ahead of the wave in Portland, is swallowed up a few hours later while watching Christmas movies. When did Herschel ever have time to accumulate followers?

Who's asking her to write this thing? When did she have time to write it? Is the frame narrative really happening at all, or have the thousandthborn just created some sort of false (or, well, "false", as "to predict is to become") Miriam to write a book for them? Did they just have the historical record a little off, and didn't know how videos were consumed at this point in time? How does that same Miriam write about not getting As and getting As at different points?

And ultimately... what is she? Just an interesting riff on a "normal girl", as a lens to view Herschel from the outside? Avoid normalizing his crazy dogma too thoroughly as the reality of the story? There's gotta be more to it than that- I'm probably missing something here, what the frame narrative is and how she fits into this AI doom drama. Maybe if I could make heads or tails of "She of High Mind" as something besides "Herschel writing erotic fanfiction about his sister and Santa Claus after having been beaten within an inch of his life with a frying pan", or if I knew what math thing the [...[...[...[...[]]]]]s were gesturing at. Something her sense of emptiness- about numbers as set theory, built on recursions of the empty set? I dunno. Her half of things is way more of an enigma to me than Herschel's fairly straightforward mania.

-

But yeah, that was good as hell. I didn't, like, take down notes on every line that made me go "damn, that's a good line!", because that would have been like 60% of the lines in the story. Herschel's perspective is so much fun to absorb and unpack, and makes so much more sense than anyone in the story gives him credit for. He is being perfectly literal! When has he not? Even while he's going on and on and on and spending an entire half hour writing a preface to his chronicle instead of actually writing the chronicle, it's hard not to be charmed and carried along by his voice. Very fun read.

[stoovrs]

FOUR SWORDS LIVES!!!

[noirve]

love how armand was all "like someone got sick on the canvas?" about a modern artwork yet his own plays at that time were completely niche and experimental and just straight-up absurd

[lenievi]

out of curiosity

are there any specific moments/situations/scenes you look for in post-Seine Valjean/Javert fics? (excluding anything related to the Seine and the recovery. After that and before Marius/Cosette wedding.) Stuff you rarely see, or stuff you feel like it has to be there, or just small character(s)/relationship(s) moments?

Not just for Valjean and Javert, but also Cosette, and maybe Marius.

I've just thrown out like 50% of my planned outline because of one line, so I'm just looking for some sparks that could potentially inspire a new direction

[leechjuice]

looking for an intimate, bloody lesbian horromance to sink your eager teeth into this summer?

e-ARC applications for my debut novel, IN THE END, YOU KILL US BOTH are now OPEN, and will remain open until JULY 19TH.

full synopsis + cws can be found on the application page! due to graphic content, please do not apply to receive an e-ARC if you are under eighteen years old!

click here to apply!

[scalierpepper]

hi friends! i would love your thoughts and ideas abt something if you are willing:

imagine you are harrowhark nonagesimus and have abruptly remembered your cavalier was not ortus nigenad and was in fact gideon nav. all your memories of her come flooding back. what moments or details of gideon flash through your mind at this point?