#do you not understand THEORY

[asthedeathoflight]

the extended Deaf staging post. under a cut cause um. oh boy. I got a little carried away.

First of all wanted to preserve @subwaylesbians 's tags about Deaf Swan for posterity:

#secondly! okay okay SO#teen swan#already sleeping rough#taking a bad blow to the head in a fight and coming out of it with sensorineural hearing damage#and you know that girl is not getting medical attention. so she just tries her best to adjust#to how it makes the isolation worse and threats harder to clock#cleon taking note of the scrappy kid sleeping under the boardwalk and sending cochise down to investigate. except the kid doesn’t notice her#coming until cochise has a hand on her shoulder. predictably this does not end well#obviously swan doesn’t win the fight - if you can even call it one - but cochise does come home with a split lip. at this point cleon#is definitely interested. so she goes down herself. this time swan sees her coming - barely - and she’s trying to talk her down from another#escape attempt when she realises the kid is desperately trying to read her lips. and so she tries signing. obviously swan doesn’t know#any ASL yet. but it’s enough for swan to realise that cleon’s Deaf. and the first moment in which she thinks that maybe she should trust#this woman#cleon teaching her ASL. and just being so proud to be capital D Deaf that it rubs off a little. and swan holds her head a bit higher#(also future swan teaching mercy. only to find out she’s been bullying the other vaguely-competent ASL users in the crew#into#also giving her lessons while swan’s back is turned. it’s 80% out of love for her girlfriend and 20% out of hating to miss the shit-talking.#she learns pretty quick)

I think Swan having acquired hearing loss is super interesting! Becoming disabled while she's out on her own would be super scary and isolating and she probably wouldn't have any sort of resources to learn ASL or anything. She'd probably be trying so hard to hide it too bc she thinks it makes her a liability to have on a crew. Also love Mercy getting the others to tutor her in ASL that's very sweet! Also kind of heartbreaking because to me the two hearing Warriors who were best at ASL were Fox and Ajax so whenever Mercy asks Cochise or Cowgirl a question about it they feel that little pang of loss.

Okay so for MY thoughts about this whole matter.

In terms of like fanfiction land I think Cleon is Deaf but she can talk so people don't always know. Despite being able to assimilate tho she's very invested in Deaf culture and disability advocacy. I'm not sure what the state of Deaf education was like in New York in the 70s but I think Cleon would like organize community ASL classes and stuff like that. Her and Ajax are childhood best friends in this au. to me.

Rembrandt's parents are both Deaf and they have a very like pearl-clutching Toph Beifong's parent's attitude towards her being in a gang even though shes like MOM 🙄 they're literally a Deaf gang. I think in this au she runs with the Warriors less out of like economic suppression and more because like her opportunities in life are kind of limited from being Deaf and queer so she'd rather hang out with the Warriors. Rembrandt can't talk but also like she's never wanted to learn to talk 'cause fuck hearing people. She doesn't have anything to say to them. New Warriors who didn't already know ASL are always really surprised by her because she seems pretty quiet and shy but then as they pick up ASL they realize she's always shit-talking everyone in the background. Real "they didn't know I knew their language" moments with her.

Okay but in addition to fanfiction land there is also hypothetical Deaf staging of Warriors land. And in theater land I have some different opinions.

Okay so like for those unaware in Deaf theater there's a practice of having Deaf actors signing their lines as Deaf characters and then having a hearing actor say those lines out loud at the same time. This hearing actor is a "voice" and they are of varying physical reality depending on the production.

Some Deaf productions are almost entirely presented in ASL as well as English but I think obviously most of the gangs are not going to be addressing the Warriors in ASL so this show would rely heavily on supertitles like opera-style. I think you could get really cool with it as a production design thing though like if you had multiple projection surfaces throughout the set. Moments like the crowd screaming in Derailed could get really cool. But anyways that's pretty minor.

So the important thing that's going on here is that Cleon has a voice and Rembrandt doesn't. Cleon's voice is not physically real tho she's just a voice. Maybe she's off stage or something. But what matters is that Cleon can make the Riffs hear her. Does Masai know ASL? Is he somehow metatextually hearing the voice? doesn't matter. That's simply Cleon's impact. Cleon's role in the story is already about speaking truth to power and making men listen to her as a woman so this is just adding a disability angle to that.

I think for the most part the other Warriors rely on the fact that Rembrandt can lipread so if they are using ASL for her benefit it's more simplistic and they'd still get supertitled. Except for Ajax and Fox who sign while they talk, and of course Ajax and Rembrandt's background entirely ASL running commentary.

So. Rembrandt doesn't have a voice. How does that work? Easy. With the help of my handy dandy word document of every single line of hers in the entire musical I can tell you who says every one of Rembrandt's lines.

The really handy thing about Rembrandt is like half of her lines she's saying at the same time as somebody else, so if she's speaking with someone else they're speaking for her. Very easy and fun.

In general if Rembrandt is speaking on her own Ajax is talking for her, with the assumption that this is like. Normal every day procedure for the Warriors. So like all her little haterly asides in the first half of the musical is Ajax talking. In general the delineation between whether Ajax and Rembrandt are speaking as a unit or if Ajax is talking for Rembrandt is whether Ajax is also signing.

There are a few moments where I think Fox would talk for her instead like I think Fox picks up the "what are we gon do?" in Woodlawn Cemetery for sure, and Rembrandt's first two attempts to get Ajax to back off of Barnes.

There are a few other moments though where I think nobody picks up Rembrandt's lines and they're only supertitles. Some of these moments are like just for fun like I think her finding Coney Island on the map doesn't get spoken aloud as like our lighthearted establishing use of the device. But nobody picks up Rembrandt's "where you going???" in Park at Night because she's only talking to Ajax. and Ajax doesn't listen to her anyways.

After Park at Night Fox picks up being Rembrandt's voice for Cardigans and We Got You 1. Then, in the reprise, Rembrandt physically grabs Fox to get her to act as her voice for her monologue. Fox speaking here is blurring the line between things that are really happening and things which are metaphorical but that's the great thing about theater because you can just stand right on the line and not pick a side. As Fox starts to see what Rembrandt means she starts to sign along with her, and then is on the same page as her to start giving orders to the other Warriors when they have to run.

Momentary note that we don't translate Rembrandt saying Fox's name in Reunion Square because by this time we've learned Fox's sign name bc we've seen it in the roll call a bunch of times so no translation necessary! I don't know enough about ASL to have any opinions about sign names but I think that getting to pick out sign names for the Warriors would be a very fun part of doing the translation for this musical and they'd add a little extra pizazz to the roll call. Cool projection shenanigans for the remix in Reunion Square too!

And then finally. Nobody picks up any of Rembrandt's lines after Fox dies. We let that last "What are we gon do?" just hang in the air.

[khruschevshoe]

There is a conversation to be had about the fact that Taylor Swift's album is being played in its entirety across all of iHeartRadio's 868 stations, pushing out the opportunities other artists might have had to get radioplay. That's the literal definition of a monopoly. No wonder she'll hit the top of the radio play charts with this maneuver, because at least 65 minutes (if not the back side of the album, which would take it to nearly twice that length) across EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT STATIONS will be dedicated to her, artificially boosting her radio play and decreasing everyone else's. In this essay I will—

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

I'm sweating and crying, but I own someone's life now so that's cool

You guys BETTER be clicking the pictures to see the details better >:(

Part one is HERE!!

[magicpiano]

I think the comedy of Red Hood and Matches Malone both being known criminals is underutilized. I need fics where they are both working a job "together" but both are perfectly aware they are actually on different sides. They can't say that in front of the other goons without compromising each other's identity though.

So like they are both part of the same heist team. Jason has to figure out if Bruce is here to sabotage the mission or is just intel gathering. (It is actually a secret third thing: father son bonding.)

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[rebekahgaveup]

Without a doubt the worst part of Taylor being at this level of popularity/fame again is all the people who want to be different and edgy and are claiming she's just an objectively evil man-hating eco-terrorist attention whore all while proudly proclaiming they also know nothing about her bc they don't like her

[luck-of-the-drawings]

EDYN TIDESTRIDER, CHALLENGER OF THE UNDERSEA, RIVAL OF THE DEEP. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR BROTHER WAS CHOSEN TO BE A WEAPON OF THE GODS? HOW WILL YOU UNDO WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO HIM?

[apas-95]

I’m an anarchocommunist that thinks a lot of other anarchists are stupid. For example, I don’t think that most people will just make insulin or do garbage collection/processing out of the kindness of their heart, and I also don’t think if it was genuinely done out of the kindness of their hearts that it’d work great. My idea is that for the “getting people to do the shitty jobs” question, the people that do those jobs should be compensated better in some way. Maybe a larger/nicer house, I’m not sure on the details. But other anarchists will say “all labor is equal”, and while I’d like to agree in the “work is hard” sense, I think things for the obvious common good, like teacher or garbage man or doctor deserve some sort of reward over other jobs. And for the efficiency of the labor, I think *specifically for labor* there needs to be some sort of organization, and we can use what’s worked before. We don’t need to have bathtub insulin if there’s a factory right there, and if there’s no connection from the insulin factory to doctors/pharmacists and truck drivers then it won’t work either. Really, my main problem with Marxism/Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or any combination of those is that there are specific people with far too much power over others. I’m ok with light power in the way of “man you gotta drive the firetruck to the burning building even though you hate the dude that lives there”, but I’m not ok with the idea of a supreme leader or representatives in a political sense due to as I’ve amounts of power obviously corrupting people.

Really I’m sending this to you to get your criticism of my ideas- I think you’re pretty smart, and even if I disagree with you on some issues, I think I agree with you on others. I also want to say that not all anarchists are… like that.

So, years ago, before I started reading any Marxist theory, this is about where I was at politically. If you think about any of the practicalities, you come up to points where, very clearly, the maxim of 'no authority at all' conflicts with being able to do anything. If you're seriously considering how society could be better organised, if this is something you actually intend on bringing about, then you make some amount of concession to reality - as you did with the firetruck example!

Now, myself, I went on like this for a good while, coming up with methods of truly democratic organisation that wouldn't be susceptible to the types of totalitarianism I'd heard about, ending up very similar to your position. I was interested, however, in how these 'failed experiments' that I'd learned devolved into bureaucracy started out, and I started reading up on the history, and realised, with some discontent, that what I'd developed, once I'd made all the concessions for reality that would be necessary if this system were to be the actual one real human beings lives depended on, was essentially identical to the Soviet system.

From there, I read up on Marxist theory, still basically wary that this had all, at some point, been taken over by an evil dictator, but able to see that the earliest stages, at least, had been exactly what I was imagining, but put into practice. Reading the theory, reading how their experience experimenting with different forms of organisation, and the failures of some types, had led them to discover what did and didn't work, and adjust accordingly, made me suddenly appreciate why certain things were done certain ways. The harsh experiences of civil war had revealed certain dynamics and mechanics in the way society and production worked, which translates into political theories that bore out results I wouldn't have expected (and neither had the communists who had discovered them through practice!).

Eventually, with some chagrin and a significant deal of excitement, I realised that much of what I'd passively absorbed about socialism, many of the common-sense maxims that I'd been taught by capitalist society about the nature of power and so on, were very much artifacts of a decades-long war against these communists and the system they'd built, carried out by exactly the corporations and empires I had thought myself opposed to.

I won't critique any individual point of yours, but I will enjoin you to try out some Marxist theory - Dialectical and Historical Materialism, or Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, or Principles of Communism, or even the Communist Manifesto, and to read between the lines of whatever capitalist source you read on socialism, to notice every [citation needed] and wonder what actually happened such that someone felt the need to make something up.

[electronicmail]

my costume is elvis is that boring

that depends on your commitment

[kj-beastboy]

Pregnancy as a kink makes me uncomfortable so man am I glad your pregg Flug stuff is explicitly not kink oriented!

yeah I... don't wanna judge anyone... but it's more than that, it's downright terrifying to me. Blame my hormones bc I'm expecting irl but wow... I'm very sensitive and it feels dehumanizing. but ig that is kinda the point of the kink(?)

it's so common in fandoms!

I'm completely vanilla anyway tho, so not surprising.

I've tried to pretend for a super long time that I'm into kink, but most of them are off putting and I consider them intrusive thoughts, not fantasies. I'm kinda fluctuating between sex-repulsed and neutral (aroace) even fictional... ig kink just isn't for me. I tried so hard to get over it. I know some people in my asks/requests are gonna be disappointed but I'm sorry💔

I'm slightly ashamed of how boring I am and I have serious trouble connecting to anyone in fandoms due to this actually🤕 feel like the most NT autistic person ever.

anyway here's a doodle!

[greenfiend]

Mike Stopped Time For Will

Seriously. He did. Let me explain.

These scenes represent stasis. These cars are broken; their wheels unmoving. Not unlike how time is “stuck in 1983”.

I really, truly, believe that wheels represent time in this show.

This scene, where Will encounters the “Demogorgon” for the first time tells us this. The closeup shot on the wheel spinning clockwise then stopping- that’s time!

And who’s responsible for stopping the wheels of time?

Wheeler of course.

We could steal time… just for one day (Heroes by David Bowie)

If you fall, I will catch you, I’ll be waiting… time after time (Time after Time by Cyndi Lauper)

[juney-blues]

i think gamers dismissed the notion of keeping score in non-arcadey titles too easily i think. some games are a lot funner if you try to play them with score in mind

[grimm-the-tiger]

I made this post a little while ago listing some facts about shipwrecks that probably only I find interesting, so now I’m back to talk about some of them. Specifically, the Olympic. The Olympic was the namesake of the Olympic-class liners, whose most notable member was the Titanic. Out of the three Olympic-class ships - Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic - only one of them was actually unsinkable, and that was the Olympic. 

Over the more than 20 years of its existence, the Olympic was never once in real danger. The Olympic was the danger. On its fifth voyage in September 1911, Olympic was running parallel to the HMS Hawke, a British warship designed specifically for ramming things. Olympic suddenly turned to starboard (right side of the ship if you were facing towards its front), catching Hawke’s commanding officer off-guard; he wasn’t able to avoid the collision and ended up ramming the other ship. Olympic was left with a substantial hole beneath the water line (although flooding was for the most part averted due to its bulkheads actually working properly, *cough* Titanic *cough*) and a slightly less substantial hole above it. Hawke, meanwhile, had its entire bow caved in. Olympic made it back to port just fine under her own power, while Hawke almost capsized. Somehow, no one was seriously hurt or killed. 

Three fun facts about this situation: Violet Jessop, a woman famous for surviving the sinkings of both of the Olympic’s sister ships, was onboard the Olympic when this happened. This incident also reinforced the idea that the Olympic-class was unsinkable. The famous postponement of the Titanic’s maiden voyage also occurred because of this incident; a propeller shaft was damaged in the collision, they needed a new one ASAP, and, well, the Titanic was right there... 

Four years later, WWI broke out. The Olympic was requisitioned as a troop ship, given 6-inch naval guns, and sent on its way. In 1918, while travelling to France with a literal boatload of American soldiers, Olympic spotted U-103, a German U-boat chilling on the surface of the ocean. Olympic opened fire on U-103, which immediately crash dived to keep from dying, then turned to ram the U-boat. Olympic hit U-103′s conning tower and tore open the hull with its propellers. U-103′s crew decided “fuck this” and abandoned ship; Olympic didn’t bother to stop to pick them up, so a nearby American warship did instead. It was later found that U-103 was preparing to torpedo Olympic when they’d been spotted, but they couldn’t flood the torpedo tubes in time. Olympic remains the only merchant vessel in WWI recorded to have sunk an enemy vessel (which would become a more common occurrence during WWII, to the extent that the Nazis apparently tried and hanged at least one captured British merchant captain for ramming one of their U-boats. The Nazis were ones to talk, considering they rehired the man who sank the Carpathia and was notorious for war crimes that included things like “drowning surrendered enemy crews by forcing them to strip and stand on the roof of his submarine, then diving the submarine” and “attacking designated hospital ships that made it very obvious they were hospital ships”). 

Following WWI, while Olympic was being refit for civilian service, a sizeable dent was discovered below the waterline. It was later concluded to have been caused by a faulty torpedo, most likely fired by U-53 while the Olympic was travelling through the English Channel. 

Olympic collided with another, smaller ship, Fort St. George, in New York Harbor on March 22, 1924. There’s not much information on how badly Olympic fucked Fort St. George up, just that Olympic apparently fucked around a little too much and found out, because the collision broke its sternpost (support post in the back of the ship; think of it like a central pillar in a structure), forcing the entire stern frame to be replaced. 

On November 18, 1929, Olympic was cruising not far from the Titanic’s wreck site when the whole thing began shaking for two minutes. This was later found to have been caused by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Newfoundland. 

The Olympic’s last hurrah (and casualty) was on May 15, 1934, when it collided with the lightship LV-117. Olympic had known the lightship was in the area, but didn’t know where exactly it was until they were right on top of it. Olympic’s captain immediately ordered a hard turn and the engines slowed, so Olympic wasn’t moving particularly fast when it did hit LV-117 (about 3 and a half miles per hour), but Olympic was fucking huge, and the people onboard barely noticed when they practically crushed the lightship under them. Only four of the eleven crew aboard LV-117 survived; four went down with the ship and three died in Olympic’s hospital (yes, these things had hospitals; I told you there were fucking huge). 

Olympic was fully scrapped in 1937, forever going down in history as both the only Olympic-class ship that was actually unsinkable and the one with the longest reign of terror. Good God, man. I understand sinking the U-boat, but you didn’t need to bring like four other ships down with you. 

[sapphicslaylist]

Most of the fandom: UwU Thorn so soft and demure kissy kissy wife Queen I cannot hurt her she’s too nice. I must “heal” her of her wounds and cuts. She “doesn’t deserve” to be all scratched up.

My disabled, mentally ill ass: Anyways here’s an writhing cynical feral fiend of a woman with severely unaddressed mental issues and overdependency with medication to Control The Instincts™️ and maybe just maybe be worthy of something more than an endless cycle of mutual blood and death. And btw she is physically disabled because I refuse to believe those cuts just “vanished” thereafter and it’s genuinely ableist to think it would.

(Please… Please research your abuse victims and understand why the scar removal is an issue. The rest is just preference.)

[irlkisukeurahara]

"why would you want to claim (insert anime character) for the trans community? They're a bad person beca-"

I don't appreciate this insistence that transgender people have to be a good person to be valid. Transgender people are just as likely to be good-for-nothing pieces of shit as everyone else. Why do we all have to be "pure soft good boys" to be enough for you? It's a fictional character anyways, why must they adhere to real life standards?

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

ok but can we talk how in Legendary, Antinous asked a question. he’s being as rude as possible but “when’s your tramp of a mother going to chose a new husband” is a question. a question that Telemachus does not want to answer. and yeah, the immediate follow up of “why don’t you open her room so we can have fun with her” makes it seem rhetorical, but rhetorical or not, it’s definitely a question. and I’ve always wondered why Telemachus is offended by ‘tramp’ when the ‘why don’t you open her room’ thing is a million times worse. 

But what if Telemachus wasn’t offended that Antinous called Penelope a tramp? The suitors have probably been saying stuff like that for ten years, he’s used to it. What if, more than anything else, Telemachus wanted to make them forget about the question they asked? What if he was just trying to distract them?