#nitpickrider

[cripplecharacters]

Alright, I'm just gonna bite the bullet. Worst that can happen is I make a fool of myself. I've been working on superhero stories, versions of the same universe since I was in 8th grade and what I want more than anything is to modernize superheroes, create a world where they act for all people's social good and take representation to the highest level I can think of. From your position of expertise, what can I do with the creation of disabled characters that would buck the trend, do some good, and show a good side. The non-prosthetic and non-corrected for disability rep in the genre is basically nil, I have no ideas and nothing to draw on. I guess I just wanna know what disabled audiences might like to see for once in their lives.

Hello!

Disabled superheroes are awesome. There's really few of them but the ones that we do have are often really important to us - you can look at the reactions to Sun-Spider being first introduced to the Spiderverse, back then I couldn't open my fridge without seeing that one panel where she explicitly says she has Ehlers-Danlos.

Here are a few suggestions of what I'd like to see in the superhero genre:

Superheroes with facial differences. Comics love to use us for their ugly disfigured evil villains but not much else unfortunately. I'd kill for a superman type hero who saves people with a smile and a facial difference on his face. Especially for superhero stories that are geared towards kids and teens, we just desperately need something to help with shifting the public perception of people with facial differences from "evil and ugly" to "people that can be awesome". A hero with burn scars, with Treacher Collins syndrome, Bell's palsy, neurofibromatosis... anything.

Superheroes who use disability aids (and still need them when doing their job!). Sun-Spider is an awesome example, she swings from her crutches and has a spider wheelchair. That's cool as hell. But even a less in-your-face aid would be great. A superhero flying above the city with her ankle-foot orthoses visible would go really hard. Also, superheroes who are concerned on how much these things cost and try their best to make sure they're still functional while they save the city.

Heroes with different causes of their disabilities! The vast majority of morally good disabled characters were involved in An Accident or some sort of Attack that disabled them. That's not bad or wrong at all, but I think in media is kind of oversaturated with this specific portrayal when a lot of people have progressive or congenital conditions. We need more stories that show those who were born disabled as heroes equal to those who were born abled and spent most of their lives abled. Superheroes with cerebral palsy, chromosomal disorders, congenital rubella, achondroplasia, all the disabilities that tend to get ignored despite so many people having them. Same for really common chronic illnesses, diabetes or COPD are criminally underrepresented.

Disabled superheroes that aren't saints because of their disability. This is the whole "disabled person can do no wrong" trope that appears sometimes. I'm mentioning it since superheroes are more "perfect" than most characters in other genres, so try to not make it so the disabled ones can do no wrong. Disabled people can still make mistakes that are their fault, make poor decisions, or just simply be angry sometimes.

When there's no active superhero action going on, show the normal human parts of the disabled experience. Depending on the demographic you're writing for it would be different things, but there are some fairly universal concepts like inaccessibility, microaggressions, or just boring things like the prosthetic leg no longer fitting well after the character gained some weight. If your characters are from the US, don't be afraid to mention that their insulin costs are barely affordable with their superhero pay. Show how the common everyday kind of ableism affect them when they're in civilian mode. This will make it much more authentic to disabled readers.

These are my suggestions, and I hope they are helpful. My last advice is to have multiple disabled characters, and in different roles. Maybe a character with late ALS can no longer do superhero fighting, but he can still be a wonderful parent. Maybe the character with Usher syndrome is more interested in the hero than being a hero themselves (disabled heroes in relationships!). Maybe the character with phocomelia can't be a hero yet because she's six, but she can train hard to be one when she's older. Keep it varied, have them come from different life situations and have different goals just like abled characters do.

I hope this helps!

mod Sasza

[edenfenixblogs]

How strange. YOU were the one born and yet WE were the ones who ended up with the gift <3

😭😭😭

This is so nice!!! This is so incredibly kind! I just want to make my little corner of the world better. And if that’s how people think of me, that’s the best gift I could ever ever ever receive.

Thank you so much. I am grateful for your friendship today and all days.

[tunemyart]

Ok but we HAVE disowned Hercules right? Like I'm totally up on watching Xena (wish it was actually AVAILABLE places but that's neither here nor there) Kevin Sorbo can just kiss my ass, is my point.

Oh yeah. Sorbo can fuck all the way the fuck off.

I’m not a Hercules fan aside from the very iconique moment of Empress Xena pulling Gabrielle up by her hair in that one AU episode and the fingers in mouths moment that followed (do I keep screenshots of these on my computer for the express purpose of throwing friend chats into sudden horny disarray without warning? Yes I do), and even that is due more to Lucy and Renee making excellent acting choices and my interest in how it reflects back on the (actual) Xenaverse. Hercules is just nowhere near Xena’s caliber in terms of scope/ambition, narrative, themes, and - ofc - its legacy to queer media. But the first three in conjunction with the last are honestly why it has such a grip on my heart.

It is SO unfortunate that Xena has been removed (for the moment) from just about every streaming platform, but I continue to cross my fingers that per the nature of streaming, it’ll pop back up somewhere soon.

[docgold13]

I hope that the next cinematic iteration of Superman finally understands that the character is essentially Mr. Rogers with super powers...

Taking advantage of Superman's constant fear of inadvertently hurting somebody. Dick move.

The LEGION specifically taking advantage of knowing Clark personally to screw with him. DICK. MOVE.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

@nitpickrider @vo-kopen Iron Man hostess ads are always a window into a world of madness, even by the standards of these ads in general but this one takes the delicious golden sponge cake

The fact that it begins with the line "A philosophically sinister villain" is reason enough for me to love it because that's just peak writing there

But then we get into the story and like

Normally these things are pretty lighthearted affairs. Generally the villains are a pretty comically harmless bunch and even when its an actual villain from the comics the "crime" they're doing is usually little more than a minor nuisance

This one?

THIS ONE IS ABOUT A VILLAIN TRYING TO MAKE EVERYONE ON EARTH SUICIDALLY DEPRESSED

That's FUCKING DARK

Like

That's darker than some of the shit that's happened in the Max imprint and yet here its happening in an advert for a fuckin snack cake

Even the hero seems to realise this is pretty bad, normally they'll defeat the villain by either throwing cake at him or some kind of whimsical nonsense...here?

Here Iron Man just straight up beats the SHIT out of this guy and like, honestly I feel like that's the correct reaction to someone who built a Depression Gun

And the whole thing ends with the entire world STILL DEPRESSED, Iron Man just gives us a small glimmer of hope by saying the Wholesome Joy of children who really enjoy Hostess Twinkies is the only thing that might save us and like that's really horrifying as product placement?

"Enjoy Hostess Twinkies or never know joy in your life again" is a hell of a message

And leaving aside the other ways this is batshit crazy....

"Puny humans"?

So is this guy an alien? A demon? WHAT IS HE WHERE DID HE COME FROM

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON

[krinsbez]

Another Random Assortment of Cartoon (and Cartoon Adjacent) Intros

So, you may or may not recall that, I decided to share a bunch of old cartoon intros with @nitpickrider t'other week. Well, ever since, I've been thinking of ones that I missed, so. What follows is more in this vein. Gonna try to avoid ones I'm reasonably certain would be known do to Pop Culture osmosis. Going to randomly mix together shows from the '80s, '90s, and '00s, shows that I watched and shows I didn't. Probably gonna be mostly '90s and '00s, since I'm a '90s kid who kept watching cartoons longer than most of my peers.

As we do so, a game for those of you not familiar with these cartoons (and some live action shows that went for similar vibes); which do you think you'd enjoy?

Aaand that is apparently the limit.

[thegayhimbo]

🙄 @erictyberiusduckman Bro, you didn't disprove anything. You came, peddling a conspiracy theory about October 7th (while providing zero evidence to back up your claim), spewed a bunch of other antisemitic garbage, used your "Jewish family" (whom I doubt would be impressed with how you're acting right now) as a shield from any criticism (which still doesn't make any of what you said less antisemitic), got called out on your bigotry by multiple people, including @edenfenixblogs and @nitpickrider, who both did a thorough breakdown of everything wrong with your comments. And instead of listening to anything they've said..............you're sitting here behaving like a condescending douche. The only measly thing you've done at this point, in a pathetic attempt at hiding your hypocrisy, is change your username after getting called out by @tikkunolamorgtfo for initially naming your blog (@iblewrichardspeck) after an American Mass Murderer and Rapist.

Let's be honest: You weren't interested in having a good-faith discussion. You wanted to ragebait. Now that you've accomplished it, you're crawling back into your hole like the cowardly worm you are. You have nothing meaningful to contribute to the conversation about Israel/Palestine beyond spreading hatred and ignorance.

Get a life.

[gallopinggallifreyans]

Y’all found a cool bird 🥺🥺🥺 it’s so pretty

Is John C Mittermeier related to Cristina Mittermeier? There are so many Mittermeier’s in conservation/ecology :O

Figured out why I feel like shit and it’s because I am completely utterly depressed

[vo-kopen]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mikescrase/zip-1-3-an-imperfect-superhuman-vs-body-horror-cyborgs

Fricking heck, this is my third time writing this fricking message, because tumblr keeps sending me an error message. I even tried to save the second time as a draft and it still deleted everything. So I am restarting this again. You know tumblr, if you can make a booping event, you can make your site fricking functional.

Anyway, I am terrified for the world. The far right won Tuesday, they are going to try to strip rights from minorities, police brutality will increase, food regulation will loosen and more people will get sick, weather reporting will be privatized and the climate crisis will be undocumented, and the environment will only get more poisoned. Things are bad.

Those are all the real issues, issues that can kill many people and ruin lives. Those things matter. But stories matter too. I love superhero comics, and I know both Marvel and DC’s parent companies are led by supporters of the returning regime. I fear they will fall in line. The MCU is already military propaganda, and I fear the comics and characters I used to love will be fully twisted into a weapon of the right. I don’t want something that once brought me joy and escape to be reduced to a triggering scar.

So thank goodness for Zip.

Zip is an indie British comic that follows an imperfect superhero, but really is about disabilities. The lead’s super speed sabotages her from all sides, and society does not even pretend to care as she falls through the cracks. The comic holds up a gritty mirror to society, and unlike certain metaphors at “the House of Ideas,” I find that Zip nails it. Her struggles resonated deeply with me as an Autistic, and her first issue is one of my favorite comics of all time. But the comic is far from hopeless. While she messes up frequently and does attempt suicide in issue one (I mention that as a trigger warning) she decides at the end of that issue to keep living and she succeeds in saving a life. Things get dark, but there is joy too.

The kickstarter for issue three of Zip has just launched, and it needs support. Zip’s creators are not juggernauts like the big two, they need help raising the funds. Times are rough now and they will only get harder, but if you have money for comics, consider contributing. When I contributed to the second campaign I got my choice of comic cover for my physical book, and while you can buy digital copies of the first two issues off comixology, the Kickstarter can get you downloadable pdfs. So even if Bezos wants to take the comic away, he can’t. Also frick Bezos, hope you choke on a cactus.

Anyway, Zip issue three follows up on some threads from issue one, but the plot is focused on the titular hero facing down generative AI in the form of a swarm of nanomachines that consume everything to make hollow husks. As an amateur writer, I really appreciate them taking a stand against generative AI.

Speaking of art, Gail Simone praised the artwork for the issue two campaign, so that’s an endorsement.

So consider supporting this indie comic, it helps small creators, the book takes stands I don’t think the big two would, and in the upcoming regime I could use more disabled heroes to relate to. There is a reason most of my OCs are Autistic. Gosh imagine if I ever got to crossover one of my heroes with Zip. I certainly have a few who could gel with her disabled focus.

Tagging @thefingerfuckingfemalefury @majingojira @hellyeahheroes @nitpickrider @akirakan @littlemissonewhoisall @espanolbot2 and anyone else who would be interested in this gritty comic about disabled superheroes. Issue one is one of my favorite comics, it hit me hard and I recommend it heavily, but issue two was solid as well and it introduced a member of her rogue’s gallery. So if you have money for comics, consider helping this book get made.

[mamawasatesttube]

https://www.tumblr.com/nitpickrider/757619106154479616/you-are-going-to-learn-that-a-thoughtful-gift-goes?source=share

FREAKY NASTY CLOIS!!!! THE TWO OF THEM ARE SOOO GROSS FOR EACH OTHER I LOVE THEM

reminds me of these panels too skdjfh i love them.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Please know if you are my tumblr mutual, someone I follow, or just someone who likes or shares my posts, I will do deep dives on your blog and share many things in short order, whether that’s posts or tags.

@cryoverkiltmilk, @nitpickrider, @thefingerfuckingfemalefury, and @tumbleaboutit can attest this.

You have activated My Interests (tm).

There will be no escape.

[allthegoodbobdylanlyricsaretaken]

Rules: Answer and tag 6 people

(thanks for tagging me @merbear25!)

Favourite colour: carmine red

Last Song: Jose Cuervo (Shelly West)

Currently reading: A Sicilian Romance by Anne Radcliffe

Currently watching: The announcement board in my doctor’s office

Currently craving: a toasted roast beef and Swiss cheese sandwich

Coffee or tea: TEA o_o

No pressure tags: @varenychenko @ichhabeeinekleinepapagai @nixie-dantes-belvedere @timidusnix @honest-moth-of-silver-grove @nitpickrider

[dcoasis]

15 Questions for 15 People

Thanks for tagging me homie @nitpickrider

1. Are you named after anyone?

My middle name sorta is after my dad (Brian, Ryan).

2. When was the last time you cried?

I was actually crying from laughter yesterday because of a YouTube video.

3. Do you have kids?

Fuck NO. I like babysitting every so often, but I haven’t the patience for a full time kid. And I am absolutely NOT pushing a baby out. Maybe adoption when I am older and wiser.

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

I don’t play any currently but I have played tennis, and a bit of basketball.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Wouldn’t YOU like to know…

6. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Their ability to hold conversation. I cannot hold conversation. If you can lead then we are solid. If you cannot then we are sinking faster than the titanic.

7. What's your eye color?

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Scary movies. I used to be terrified of them but now I love the suspense.

9. Any talents?

Storytelling. At least I hope I’m talented at it. Also autism. I’m slowly gaining the ability to name every single DC character I see. I will be watching a movie or show and my parents will say “who is that” and I’m like “yeah, that’s Matter-Eater Lad 😌”. I’m very proud.

10. Where were you born?

The great state of Missouri in the US of A.

11. What are your hobbies?

Reading, writing, drawing, baking, watching random YouTube videos. Recently I’m working out more and trying to self-teach martial arts.

12. Do you have any pets?

No, but I want a dog. Too bad I’m broke.

13. How tall are you?

5'4. But if anyone asks I’m 5’8.

14. Favorite subject in school?

Science!

15. What is your dream job?

An indie comic book writer. I used to be very wary about that profession. It’s one of those starving artist jobs that I always leaned away from even though nobody told me that I couldn’t.

One day I read a book called My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness (highly recommend, especially if you are a lonely lesbian and an adult) and I got to the part where the main character was looking for a job. She was being interviewed, and the interviewer asked what she liked doing. She went on and on about manga, to the point that the interview stopped and he told her that her eyes were lighting up in a way that their job couldn’t make it. He encouraged her to go for what she was passionate about, and she woke up to the reality that you don’t have to be miserable just because you are an adult. That really resonated with me.

I don’t think it has to blow up and reach millions of people, I just want to make something I’m proud of and have the courage to share it with others. Moral of the story: reach for your dreams.

@memengwaans @gothamcityneedsme @brucetalias @bi4bi-wallinda @fatheriimaginedyoutaller @aliteralchicken @jessechambers-ass @tatsujeff @ormymarius @reverseflashes @nyxqueen97 @strawberrytalia @fancyfade @antifa-terra @funnefatale

[nitpickrider]

"Nitpickrider, why didn't you annotate anything from Action Comics 184?"

Can you say "Violently uncomfortable Native American stereotypes"?! :D

Action Comics 184

[gallopinggallifreyans]

*chinhands* I did not know the JSA was part of the All Star Squadron (I didn’t even know that was a thing!)

I think it’s really interesting when real life historical events can be shuffled with fictional stuff, especially with comics. I know Marvel was created by Jewish Americans, I’m assuming DCU was similar…?

Hello friends, I have been having a very terrible horrible no good very bad few weeks, and so I come asking, nay, begging you to tell me about a little something that has brightened your day, or send me a picture of a cute animal, or infodump about something interests you, or anything else (I accept anything and everything) please I am so sad give me something to be happy about

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

:D

@nitpickrider I managed to find this issue while out shopping today

The very first time Superman became involved in the SKELETON WAR