#but he is not

[prlssprfctn]

Today I am thinking about Jason, who is fresh out of his coffin, catatonic and non-verbal. His mind is in a haze and in a constant terror most of the time, and when it isn't - when he manages to ground himself, to stop imagining Joker's laughter and the phantom screech of the crowbar - he can't bring himself to speak, because there is... smoke in his lungs. A fucking soot. Rare sounds and words that escape his mouth sound like a painful, inhuman shriek.

He vividly remembers screaming his lungs out in the coffin, though, as he woke up to realise that he was buried six feet under, locked away from the rest of the world. So, maybe it was the last drop - a last attempt to use his voice.

His next tries are too painful. And when his desperate cry for Bruce - for someone to call his dad - is getting ignored, pushed aside, Jason doesn't even want to try any more. What use it would be? No one listens to him anyway.

He is as good as dead.

Oh.

He is dead.

[temperamentalaquarius]

Idk what makes Jason an interesting character is the inherent tradgedy of watching someone suffer the unimaginable for what is ultimately a noble cause, only to come out the other side so broken and bitter that he literally harms the people he was originally trying to protect. He hurts children, victims, and Gotham as a whole under the guise of saving them, when in reality he wants to matter more than anything. He's an unreliable narrator who clawed himself out of one hole just to dig himself a deeper one. Why strip his character of that to make him more palatable when it's literally the most compelling thing about him? It's not pretty but if you're not going to meet it head on than what's the fucking point

[ingo-ingoing-ingone]

Demons don't sleep at night

For Day 6 of Emmet month, Emotions, I decided to do a piece inspired by one of my favorite submas fics ever, Demon in White by @anxiously-introverted. When listening to Fake a Smile by Alan Walker, I felt the lyrics fit really well and have had this image in my head ever since as part of an animatic sort of thing. I figured I could make one panel real.

Emmet having lower self esteem and struggling with self worth is a headcanon that hits me extremely close to home (hello, projection), so portrayals of Emmet dealing with that, then receiving assurance from his loved ones, mean a lot to me. This fic has lived in my brain since it was written and I am glad I finally drew something inspired by it.

[emotionalwarmth]

Genesis wondering what to write into the (love letter to his bf) poem

[egginfroggin]

Reset, Reverse Akari and her Hisuian Braviary before he became a Hisuian Braviary.

Look at that little man. Little round man. He small. His trainer is so happy to have him.

[grunklebongrip]

When a fic doesn’t fit my head canons but it’s well-written

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[apollos-boyfriend]

[stealingpotatoes]

it’s eunuch Tucker’s adoptiversary and defacto birthday today <3

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

now that trump has tiktok, twitter, facebook and insta in his pocket, get ready for a massive wave of internet censorship. one of trump's greatest weapons has always been misinformation; it's going to become harder and harder to spread facts and criticism going forward. posts that aren't made invisible will be magically ignored by the algorithm. dissidents will have their accounts deleted and voices erased.

this is a suppression tactic. this is another stage of fascism.

[wishfulsketching]

Silco and his terror of a daughter

[meltygetswifi]

not to be a dirty commie or anything but i don't think any one person should have enough money to solve world hunger and then get to decide not to

[sneepsnorp3d]

major traffic incident

[fluent-in-lesbianism]

I took a 6yo boy to his placement and as soon as I got him situated in the back he saw my SpongeBob driver’s license air freshener hanging on my rearview mirror. He asked if that’s really SpongeBob’s driver’s license and I said yeah it’s real. Then he asked where I got it if SpongeBob’s underwater so I told him I wore a helmet like Sandy and stole it from SpongeBob when he slept, and without missing a beat he goes “That’s identity fraud”

[andisupreme]

At the company retreat, one extremely drunk girl asked what my pronouns were. (Eventually, it took her a while to word the question.) After the whole conversation was done, she goes- "YEAHHH GURL, Get on with--with THY bad self! See what I did?? They/them/thy."

I was almost holding back tears from trying not to laugh as I told her yes that's great you nailed it honey. Thank you very much I am feeling the love.

Anyway I've been assigned Thee/Thine at Supportive Drunk Girl