#now it's 95% of the time and I'm not used to it and haven't figured out how to deal with it

[ti2guhr]

Fuck nausea holy fucking shit

[nausikaaa]

Six Sentence Sunday

thanks for tagging me @run-for-chamo-miles @that-disabled-princess and @orange-peony!

classicstober 2024's prompts have been announced and i'm super excited because it's historical figures! my obsession with Roman non-fiction and biographies has finally paid off!

i thought it would be a good opportunity to jumpstart my writing brain by writing lots of short and snappy things. and so today, i've written 1000 or so words for Regina of South Shields, who i've had the pleasure of visiting!

i'm about to ramble, so i'm putting it under a cut. also warning, i've included photos of a tombstone and a human skeleton. if you just want to read the six sentences and not see them, scroll fast right to the bottom.

so, this is Regina. or rather, her tombstone, discovered by builders in 1878, and a reconstruction of how it might have looked when it was erected. if you haven't heard of her, which is understandable, she was a British woman from modern day St Albans (near London) during the Roman occupation of Britain. she was sold as a slave (did her family need money? was she born a slave? we don't know) and bought by a man named Barates, from Palmyra, a city in modern day Syria, who was either a soldier or at least travelling with the Roman army. they moved to a garrison close to Hadrian's Wall in what is now South Shields in the north east, and Barates fell in love with Regina. he freed her and they got married.

her tombstone is mostly important because it tells us that a Syrian man was in Britain during this time, and since her tombstone has Palmyrene script on it, and the chances he engraved his own wife's tombstone are slim, there was likely at least one other Syrian person who could engrave headstones around. which suggests that there was a whole group! the name of the Roman fort in South Shields was Arbeia, which could even mean "the place of the arabs."

it's estimated that a third of people in Britain during the Roman occupation were long distance migrants, and most were not slaves, as is often assumed. Ivory Bangle Lady, who I have also visited in York Museum and who lived around the same time, is believed to have come from Africa. and she was a wealthy free woman!

but what about Regina? well, we know she was from the Catuvellauni tribe, and that she died aged 30. we can assume she spun wool as she's depicted doing so on the tombstone, which was a respectable pastime for Roman women, and she's shown wearing lots of jewellery, so she probably led a comfortable life.

but we don't know how she felt about her marriage, as her tombstone is in Barates' words. did she love him back, or was she under duress to marry him to improve her own prospects? did they have children? did she have friends in Arbeia? did she have to learn Aramaic or Latin to communicate with Barates, or did he know Celtic? we simply don't know. so much of her personality has been lost to time.

so my challenge was to write something that pieces together various possibilities to create what could be an approximation of who Regina was. to give her some life, a voice, and at least a bit of agency.

okay. enough preamble. here's six lines:

I had grown and reached my twentieth year, and as the dark circles beneath my eyes disappeared and the warmer months led me to abandon my woollen cloak, I noticed men's behaviour towards me change. I am not the type to play at being coy- I knew they found me attractive. With my white skin, red hair, and pale blue eyes, I was exotic to them. I stood out.

I noticed Barates' behaviour change too. I realised I had a choice to make.

if you want to know more about Regina, my main source is this podcast by Mary Beard, but i also took inspiration from the book Roman Woman by Lindsay Allason-Jones.

tags: @forabeatofadrum @j-nipper-95 @artsyunderstudy @prettygoododds @confused-bi-queer @imagineacoolusername @ic3-que3n @aristocratic-otter @larkral @hushed-chorus @ivelovedhimthroughworse @shemakesmeforget @fatalfangirl @ebbpettier @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @cutestkilla @youarenevertooold @alexalexinii @shrekgogurt @bookish-bogwitch @thewholelemon @supercutedinosaurs @shutup-andletme-go @theearlgreymage @ileadacharmedlife @alleycat0306 @carryonsimoncarryonbaz @comesitintheclover @noblecorgi @roomwithanopenfire and @blackberrysummerblog

[wandanatss]

heart in hand - chapter one;

things haven't been the same since you came into my life

summary: Summer of 1995 finds you in a cafe with a new-to-town Natasha Romanov. Little do you know, this day is going to change your life.

warning(s): swearing, slight mentions of guns & bullying.

word count: 1,087 words

author's note: i don't have access to the app i use to make covers/headers/dividers for my fics, so this canva one i threw together literally five minutes ago looks good enough. the dividers i used are by @cafekitsune. reblogs would help <3 i'm open to constructive criticism! i especially hope that one anon who helped a lot earlier likes it!

It all began in the summer of ‘95, in a little shop north of town. You sat there every day for want of something to do, someone to talk to. Being the friendless nerd was fine during the school year, but in the summer you always shifted from being alone to lonely. 

Your fingers tapped out an errant beat on the countertop, and you hummed a mindless tune. Your eyes droved over the menu as though your were trying to find something you wanted; as though you hadn’t already memorized it in your countless trips to the shop. In the end, though, you picked your usual - a sandwich, a doughnut, and a Coke. Picking the items up off of the counter once you got them, you sat at the only empty table there - a two-seater near the very back, where no one could see you. Figures. Invisible everywhere in the world, it seemed.

As you started to munch on the sandwich, interspersed with sips of your drink, your eyes watched the windows. Maybe you’d have your ‘movie moment’, where someone walked in that you fell in love with. Maybe it would be the person of your dreams. You looked down for a moment to pick up the cup, and within those few seconds, the door opened and a bell jingled. You looked up.

Y/n: I don’t know, it was fate or something. This absolute bombshell of a girl walked in. Her coppery-red hair tumbled over her shoulders, her eyes were bright, and she had the perfect red lip. She wore a thin white shirt, clinging to her with sweat. Her shorts were blue, and truly made her look like she had legs for days. When she ordered and got her food, she just wandered around for a minute before she saw me. Saw the seat in front of me. She smiled, asking if she could sit. Of course, I agreed. Neither of us knew it yet, but it was the start of something truly iconic. The girl, of course, was Natasha Romanov. We were both seventeen at the time.

Excerpt from ‘Mic in Hand, Heart in Throat’ by Kat S. Releasing 1 May 2028.

You introduced yourself, and started to make small talk about the weather – sweat-soaked Natasha’s body was a sight to see, and under the A/C breeze, her hair fluttered around her face. You were flushed, but you could pass it off to the heat, too. As Natasha waved over a waitress and placed her own order (a strawberry milkshake and a sandwich), you took the time to observe her.

She had her bicycle keys in her pocket, and two bracelets hanging from her arm. One was beaded, with the little alphabet charms reading N A T in different colours. The other was a few simple strings wound together and tied, giving the effect of a young child having made it. Now that you were closer to her, you could see the bottom of her hair bleached and cool-toned, showing her having dyed it blue a while back.

“Y/n? Do you want something too?” asked Natasha, a silent smirk in her eyes. She knew what you were doing.

Eventually, once the waitress was gone, you and Natasha struck up an easy flowing conversation. She confessed that she had biked here in the heat to get out of town, have her own ‘summer experience’. She was new. That explained why she hadn’t been in high school with you. You smiled and told her all about the high school she’d likely be joining, and joked about how she should make it a point to stay away from you. It would be social suicide, you explained.

Natasha turned slightly away at the comment, something catching her eyes, but looked back with a frown on her face. 

“I think people should be lucky to know you, Y/n. You’re a good – a good friend.”

Through the chat you have with her, you discover that not only can she play the guitar, but also the drums. She can also sing, insanely well if the competition awards aren’t a lie, and she’s just a fucking dream. She gave you her home-phone number, and her address. Call me, she wrote on the paper napkin, like she was some kind of rogueish flirt and not a schoolgirl still in her teens.

You took the napkin home with you and pinned it onto a little board, fingers moving over the bumps in the paper where she had pressed too hard with the pen. Call me. Come over sometime. You smiled, idling near the telephone. Maybe you would call her later, you thought.

Natasha Romanov: Y/n, they were an interesting person. My first friend who wasn’t my sister. We’d both been adopted, and been the town freaks for a while. Yelena, she was all spite and rage packed into a little spitfire of a ten-year-old child. It didn’t help that she wanted to give her opinions freely. It was my job to protect her, and when that backfired, we had to move. This far into the story, you already know I wouldn’t be too cut up about it. I had my sister and my adoptive parents. End of fuckin’ story, right? And then the chapter turned. After I met Y/n that day, everything changed. I finally had a reason to stay in the new town. I had made a friend.

Excerpt from ‘Mic in Hand, Heart in Throat’ by Kat S. Releasing 1 May 2028.

As you lay in bed that night, all hot and bothered about the day you’ve had, words start to form in your mind. Fragments; not enough to be worth writing, but you can see where you’ve started to... well, you’ve started thinking up a song.

The next morning, you wake up from a rather pleasant dream to hammering on your bedroom door. 

“Wake up, kid! It’s time to go!”

Oh. It was your mother, a staunch stickler for early-birds-get-the-worm. You would’ve far preferred to sleep in, especially in the summer, but the thoughts from the previous night – the song you thought of – had finally almost fully formed in your mind. You were eager to pen it down in case you forgot, but first, to appease your mother, you showered and had some cereal. Then you were back in your room, ready to write.

She’s got blue hair and a pretty pink smile

Looks that can kill and hands in mine

She’s a girl she’s a gun she’s the newest chapter

She’s a dream and what my heart’s been chasin’ after…

lmk if you want to be added to the taglist! | fic tag

[changingplumbob]

Random Ramblings

If this is somehow even more long winded than I normally am (yeah it's long), it's because I'm going through an IBS flare up that is kicking my butt.

BUT I wanted to get my thoughts out about some of my content warnings, because I'm very tired and have been shoving the same one in front of my Reece/Samir parts even if they might not reflect that particular part because I'm too tired to judge how spicy warrants a spice warning.

Where to start... If you haven't figured it out, all my grown sims are currently woohoo positive, as in they do not think that how much woohoo a sim does or does not have dictates how "good" a person is. Why? Because whoever made sex synonymous with shame is stupid and has ruined many a life (it was probably a dude, no offense dudes out there).

While I don't currently have any sims that are asexual, not all my sims feel the same about woohoo.

For example Charlie and Kaori would choose a good chat over woohoo most times. Not because they don't love each other, or are averse to woohoo, but because that's who they are together. Most days they tire themselves out as athletes and prefer to relax together

Cassandra and Rahul on the other hand love to have woohoo, particularly unprotected, three kids and still not done

Keira, who rolled the soulmate aspiration, chose to wait before she had woohoo. Her high school girlfriend (Morgan Fryes) cheated on her because she wouldn't woohoo. Even after meeting Marta (her now fiance) she wanted to wait until she felt comfortable being vulnerable around her.

Then of course we have my superstar Joey who is aromantic but allosexual (a mod did that, I didn't choose it). As soon as he became a YA he got a fwb. His philosophy is basically, oh she identifies as she? Can I hit it? I love you Joey that's why I call you a slut

Normally I just chuck up a sim spice warning if there are some screenshots taken during woohoo. Me being me, I don't feel like including pixel private parts in my published posts. Kudos to all you who do, it's just not my style. It's also rare that I'll write about anything that happens during a woohoo session, mostly I'll just write some foreplay then say it happened. That said, I do like to chuck in innuendo here and there if it feels like something my sims would say (any other writers feel like they know exactly what their sims would say at times?). I'm also not in a hurry to be classified as a mature blog, purely because that doesn't fit like 95% of my gameplay. Yes, I use wicked whims for my gameplay, but that doesn't mean I'm going to show you Luna being a lowkey pillow princess... shut up brain you can't just say that

Finally, on to my babies Reece and Samir. If there are spectrum's they are at the extreme end (also in my country the age of consent is 16 so any hijinks they get up before Reece turns 18 isn't percieved as illegal here). They both enjoy woohoo, like a lot a lot. Probably didn't help that there rotation had love day in it but they both also have high woohoo drives. They were flirty most of the time, so what would they do in that state? Sweet talk each other of course.

Now, if you weren't aware and you probably weren't cause it's been ages since their last rotation Reece and Samir also have a dynamic my other sims don't. Although on reflection Bob and Eliza have it as well, just to a lesser extent. Reece, chatterbox ego that he is, is a submissive. Samir, who barely says more than a sentence to anyone but Reece, is a dominant. When together they'll often lean into these roles, using both innuendo and statements of things their partner does that they're in to. Some people would probably label things that even use those words as mature, but it's a dynamic that exists people.

Now their chapter isn't me suddenly switching to speaking in 100% innuendo, but it has more than my average writing, at least for the first half you'll understand later if you read hence the sim spice warning. Looking back on it the chapter does not contain any screenshots mid woohoo, but the dialogue makes me want to put a disclosure above the cut, since I'm still not sure of all the rules around here, and my IBS is making it hard to focus right now.

Woohoo talk done? It's done! That's what she said... shut up brain, we're not twelve!

The other warning is about sim death. No one dies in the chapter but it deals with figuring out what happened to Samir's birth parents. Previously it's been established they were killed when he was 5 but the chapter and my Samir flashback pov short bit that I am low key proud of does involve mention of blood, death, dying etc. Me being me, I do not include any screenshots of dead, dying or seriously bleeding sims, it's not my aesthetic (don't act as though you don't love playing Until Dawn, the Quarry and The Dark Pictures Anthology which is full of gore... okay yes but gore does make me queasy for the most part, could never ever watch a saw film) and things aren't described in explicit detail. But death is death and grief is complex. It can hit you at unexpected times in unexpected ways.

So why am I bothering to put content warnings at all? Still sounds pretty tame. Yeah, probably, but as mentioned, I still don't know all the rules around here. Plus I would choose for someone to not read my story and avoid seeing something that upset them, than have someone grieving a loss see my dead sims bodies on their dash because I tagged it Sims4 every time. So if you see a content warning on my post, it most often just means viewer discretion advised. Not that you'll click and get flashed by my sims.

[foone]

Hi I'm Foone Turing. I've been here a while but never really did an introduction post, so...

Hi. Yes, that's my name. I'm an asexual trans enby (they/them pronouns), I'm married, and I'm both older than you expect and younger than you expect, depending on what you know me from. I'm a writer and programmer. I'm better known on Twitter, at the moment. I'm well known for being severely ADHD and I'm also on the autism spectrum, somewhere near ultraviolet. I live near Oakland, California, USA, but I grew up on a farm in the south. I'm a furry, but I don't have a fursona yet.

I'm big into retrotech stuff, especially floppy disks. 80s and 90s PC stuff mainly, but I have a passing interest in everything else. I loves me some weird tech that you have no idea ever existed. I'm also big into analog media. VHS tapes, laserdiscs, that sort of thing.

Fandom wise, I'm a Trekie from way back, primarily in the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT era. I haven't yet gotten into the new stuff, and I have only a passing knowledge of the original series. I'm also a big fan of Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who (4th doctor, and new who doctors 9,10,11). I watch a bunch of British panel shows: HIGNFY, Mock the Week, Nevermind the Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats (primarily the countdown spinoff).

I am a Big Hater on crytypocurrentseas and AI art. I used to be famously mad at the JWST, but now that it's in space and functional, I've calmed down. They just need to rename it and I'm golden.

I'm currently splitting my social media presence across three sites:

* Tumblr, obviously. Shitposting, jokes, queer stuff, and queer joke shitposts are all going here.

* mastodon: I'm putting my tech stuff here. Teardowns, building new death generators, fun historical weirdness.

* Twitter: formerly my primary platform, but now I just use it to keep in touch with people and make fun of the impending collapse of Twitter.

Stuff I do and have done after the readmore.

(I'm on mobile now but I'll get back to this on the desktop and add more links)

* I run lettuce.wtf, a webcam showing a lettuce to see if it will outlast Twitter. (My money is literally on the lettuce)

* my long running site The Death Generator: a tool for making fake video game screenshots, with user supplied dialogue.

* I run some Twitter bots, one of which is more popular than me, and all of which will need to be migrated soon: Gay Cats, WinIcons, Print Shop Deluxe, and Every Clue Line.

* I got Microsoft 3D Movie Maker open sourced

* I got rickrolled so hard that it ended up on national TV

* I ran doom on a pregnancy test

* I have made many horrible and weird keyboards. Keyboards with hair, keyboards which write poetry, keyboards that take 5 hours to say "hello world", keyboards with randomly placed keys, keyboards with 7 toggle switches instead of buttons, and many more.

* I tear down random electronics and try to figure out and explain how they work. (originally on Twitter, but moving over to mastodon now)

* I pissed off the FBI on more than one occasion. They tried to get me fired, they delayed my wedding by over a month, and they mentioned my 4chan nickname in a federal trial.

* I used to work for 4chan. I was a moderator and coder, I created /rs/ and /r9k/, and I convinced moot to destroy the original politics board (for obvious reasons). Things went further to shit after I left, but I am still glad I left. Oh and I also inadvertently prevented the creation of the 4chan dating/meet up site by being too ADHD to actually complete development of it. You're welcome.

* I ran a windows 95 machine for the maximum amount of time. There's a bug where it crashes after 49.7 days of uptime, so I let it happen. I livestreamed the end on YouTube.

* I've done exhibits at the Vintage Computer Festival on the history of floppy disks and optical discs.

* I've worked with the Video Game History Foundation (and others) to preserve old games and game development resources (source code and such). I'm big into archival!

* I wrote a really famous Twitter thread about the surprising way our vision works, which is still circulating in screenshots (including on Tumblr!) something like 5-6 years later.

* I made my old apartment play the Zelda Ocarina of Time shop music when you walked I the door.

* I run the Tumblr animefloppies, collecting screenshots and GIFs of floppy disks in anime.

* I run several other sub-tumblrs for collecting weird things, but I'll have to link them later.

* I am technically a speedrunner. I did the TAS of Duke Nukem 1, episode 1, and a joke speedrun of Solar Winds, where I beat the game by ignoring every single possible objective and just flying to the end, which takes over an hour.

* I used to make games. Some of them are available for download.

* but it still do, too: I'm working on a (currently unnamed) game about managing a dairy farm. Both the developers have ADHD. This is going to take forever before it comes out, if it ever does.

* I'm currently working on three books. Two are compilations of stuff previously twitterized, one is a novel:

- Always Screaming Forever: non-fiction, stories about my career in the tech industry and various other tech/science/history stuff I love ranting about.

- The Other Side of Screaming: fiction. My short stories.

- Mundane Kaya Sona (placeholder title): a linguist gets pulled into an FBI investigation into a car crash. An unknown language leads to the discovery of a wizard living in a forest in Oregon, and an interdimensional plot to smuggle nuclear weapons to another world, and break a cold war stalemate we (the planet earth) didn't realize we were in. I've been working on the setting for this story since I was about 7 years old, and I'm excited to finally get it out of my head and into yours.

* I'm probably forgetting like 5-10 major things I've done but ADHD is a hell of a drug. I'll add more as they come to me.

[cuubism]

If you don't mind me asking - what do you think Dream's attitude/reaction towards Tolkien's works (including the legendarium!) would be? (I'm asking a lot of Sandman bloggers this, because I'm extremely curious regarding your takes on this.)

oh! hang on i gotta brush up on my tolkien because i haven't actually read any of the books since like. 2011.

i guess my main thought would be about how dream missed like, 95% of his work when he was stuck in his Jar. my understanding (read: google search) is that tolkien was building up the mythology for his stories before 1916 (when dream was captured), but most of it was not finished/published until a while after.

(this became an insane and mostly unrelated rant i am so so sorry)

i think a lot about how much of his own... area of work and power dream missed when he was trapped. the 20th century, generally speaking, was a time of rapid growth in storytelling methods and media more generally. dream missed almost all of radio, particularly radio as it became a medium for stories. radio was invented in the late 1890s but didn't see a proper rise into a storytelling medium, rather than mainly a direct communication one, until around the 30s. so dream missed the creation and growth of the first, i guess you would call it, networked storytelling, and technological storytelling, and what was... probably? the biggest return to an auditory type of storytelling since the original oral tradition, folk tales, great epics etc, for radio at its peak of cultural relevance (at least in the US and probably the ""West"" more generally, alas i can't speak as knowledgeably for other parts of the world, obviously plenty of other parts of the world had radio in the early 20th century and onward, but i don't know much about its use as a fictional storytelling medium versus for news and government broadcasts. something to look into! part of why radio became such a medium in the usa was because of our rampant capitalism and commercialism lol, so less capitalistic places might have approached it differently - here, advertisers wanted to figure out a way to monetize radio better, but obviously people aren't going to just listen to hours of ads, so they packaged them around stories, live music performances, and variety shows. that's where soap operas as a form come from -- they were originally sponsored by soap companies! also serials, though of course books have also been serialized in the past. and sponsored radio programs also birthed the sort of episodic comedies that eventually evolved into the half hour TV comedies we know today)

which also means - as a direct result of missing radio, dream also missed the rise of television as a medium - it grew directly out of radio, even the big networks we know today, CBS, NBC, and ABC were originally radio networks. television has ended up being a huge change in visual storytelling, not only in its inception, but especially in its more recent years - it's probably the only long-form audiovisual storytelling medium, which is something that didn't really exist before. huge shift in storytelling possibilities. he also missed the development of comic books, and the internet, and the resulting increased accessibility of art and storytelling to both artists and art lovers. he missed an absolutely huge, HUGE shift in the democratization of art and the ability to share it. and, once again, the development of totally new methods of storytelling in the form of internet video! not to even mention the accessibility of MUSIC, music recording and sharing was still in its infancy when dream was imprisoned and now you can get, and make, and share pretty much any music imaginable! and the new genres! and the intermediality of everything and the cross-cultural awareness!

this is not even getting into the new ease of photography, or film, which was also relatively new in 1916. imagine going into a coma when there were only silent films, and waking up to everyone and their mother making tiktoks. the last film you saw was one of chaplin's or something and then you come back and see interstellar in imax 3d. i think i'd explode. (dream would love film, too, it's very dreamlike)

dream returning to the waking world in 2022 and immediately having the entirety of tiktok beamed directly into his head:

(another thing i think about a lot but won't get into because i'm already rambling - hob witnessing the entire development of accessible writing from the printing press to fucking social media. insanity. i want to pick his brain on it

what pushed hob over the edge, do you think. what's the one thing he saw written online that briefly made him regret ever getting involved in printing at all and wish everyone was illiterate again. it was not porn, btw, mr. monsterfucker gadling can handle anything, ok. no, it was something much worse...)

anyway. rambling over. this is all to say that i am not a tolkien expert and haven't read much of his stuff anywhere recently - though i was quite obsessed with it in middle/high school - so my main thought is in relation to dream getting cut off from all of these great stories. it must have been like, to put it flippantly, your favorite tv show getting cancelled halfway through after a cliffhanger XD. he has all these stories from great storytellers - tolkien included - storytellers who are building their whole own worlds in his realm, storytellers he's nurturing and supporting in his own way - and gets ripped away from them. and when he returns, they're all gone.

here's hoping someone who knows more about tolkien can give you an answer more specifically relevant to that. that's all i got for now 😂

[ghostonly]

Disability, Cures, and the Complex Relationship Between Them

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about cures, just in general, as a concept. I've been watching the excellent videos of John Graybill II on Youtube, where he demonstrates his day-to-day movements as someone with Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy 2a, and updates every year to show how it progresses. I'm currently writing a character with LGMD and wanted to be sure I understand exactly how it impacts his daily life and movement limitations, so this has been extremely helpful, because there's only so much you can glean from a list of symptoms.

Quick Background on John Graybill II

John started this series in 2007/8, back when he was about 30 years old. He was diagnosed when he was 17, back in '95, and, when he started this series, he was very much fighting his LGMD, in a constant struggle, and angry with himself and the condition. In this, he directed a lot of toxic positivity at himself and became convinced he could defeat LGMD with positive thinking, healthy diet, etc.

Now, while I respect that there are positives to this (exercise and eating well is rarely a bad thing, and the stretches he does almost certainly have helped him to lengthen his time with mobility), there is also something to be said for accepting a physical disability for what it is. In later videos, he clearly had shifted that mindset toward something a bit more realistic. Where, in the beginning, he had been certain that he would somehow heal himself through positivity and such, he later says that may never happen, and he wants to enjoy doing what he can, while he can, instead of being in a constant battle with himself.

That being said, he does run an organization (I believe he runs it?) that seeks to fund research and find a cure for muscular dystrophy of this particular variety. And, while watching his videos from oldest to newest, I've been grappling with my complicated feelings regarding cures.

Why Are Cures a Complicated Topic?

The reason cures are a complicated topic is because, for a lot of us, cures are unlikely to ever be developed - at least not within our lifetimes and probably not within our children's lifetimes. Many physical disabilities and disorders are just too rare, too unknown, the cause unclear. For us, we have to just accept that this is something we have to live with, for better or for worse.

The other reason is that people are often proponents of seeking cures for things that don't need curing, such as autism. Obviously I haven't polled every autistic person alive, but I have known and read content from countless autistic people. I don't think I've ever found a single autistic person who wanted to be cured of autism. In fact, I would say most of them were pretty vocally oppositional toward the idea, for good reason. 90% of the difficulty that comes with being autistic comes from societal ableism and accessibility issues on a systemic level.

My Thoughts on Cures

I can't speak for everyone with incurable physical disabilities that are unlikely to have a cure developed, nor can I speak for everyone who's autistic, but, speaking for myself, talk of cures can be extremely uncomfortable to me.

I asked myself why. Because, in reality, there shouldn't be anything wrong with researching a cure for something like LGMD. It causes people great difficulty and often great pain. For certain variants, it causes early death.

And, after reflecting on my feelings for a long while, I think I've figured out why the word and the concept bothers me so much.

Cures Are Often Used as a Crutch for Ableism

There are, broadly speaking, two camps of people who want cures:

People who want to improve their quality of life, the quality of life of someone they love, or who want to prevent future generations from the difficulty they or a loved one have been dealt

People who are uncomfortable with disability and want it to go away

This is a venn diagram with a large overlap. The number of people who are purely in camp 1 is much smaller than you might hope.

Why Is Wanting to Get Rid of Disability a Problem?

Okay so here's why camp 2 is a problem. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that every disability has a possible cure that just has to be found. Why is that a problem? Disability is bad, right?

Wrong! Disability is completely amoral - it has no goodness or badness. It just is. Ideally, some of the more painful disabilities could be cured to prevent pain and early death. However, the problem with viewing disability, in a vacuum, as bad, is that your opinion of the disability will inevitably rub off on the people with the disability.

When you view disability as an adversary, you view disabled people as a problem to solve.

Just as John Graybill II explains in one of his stair-climbing videos a few years into the series, he had spent so long trying to fight the progression of the illness, that he had spent every day in passive anger and frustration. He had forgotten to just enjoy his ability to climb stairs. And he said that he wished he could go back and just enjoy it - stop timing himself on his stopwatch and trying to beat his times. Basically, even as a disabled man himself, he had spent so long looking at his disability as a problem to fix, he hadn't been properly enjoying being a person and just living his life.

When you apply the same fix-it approach to someone who doesn't have a disability, it's equally easy for them to forget the personhood of the people with disabilities. Only, instead of it being directed at themselves, it is directed at others. They push their disabled loved ones to just try harder, just push harder and for longer, eat right, try this, do that, think right, take vitamins - if you just try hard enough, you can beat this!

Except... most of the time, you can't.

The idea that doing everything right will allow you to beat a chronic illness is just ableism in a scientific hat. You're afraid - of being disabled, of the consequences of disability, of someone you love being different, of them looking weird, becoming weird, being seen in public yourself or with someone disabled, of being uncomfortable, of having to put in more energy and effort into helping someone with special needs.

The list of things people are afraid of is endless, and the positive spin on that ableism is simply fighting to fix it.

Make it go away so that you don't have to deal with it anymore.

And then, when you take that approach and apply it to the countless disabilities that don't have cures and may never have cures, you end up with boatloads of people who are seen as problems to solve. They feel like a burden to their family and friends. They're pushed to do what hurts and will actually cause more long-term problems for them by forcing themselves to do things they shouldn't be doing - things that damage their bodies, which aren't meant to do those things anymore.

The Long-Term Consequences of Ableist Pushes for Cures

So back to that argument about all disabilities being curable with time: what's the problem with making some disabled people uncomfortable if, one day, all disability is cured and there are no more disabled people?

Well, the simple answer is this: that's never going to happen, and if you think that way, you're a eugenicist.

Even if every disability is curable with time, the ends do not justify the means - the means being to humiliate and degrade disabled people by treating them like problems.

And it would take decades, maybe even centuries, of those means to even reach the ends. But we'll stop that argument there, because there will never be an end to disability.

Why There Is No End to Disability

So, the thing about disability, is it will never cease to exist. Even if it was a good goal to have, which it isn't, it's never going to happen.

Disability is often caused by gene mutation. At one point, none of the gene mutations for our current physical disabilities existed. They developed. And, just as the current disabilities developed over time and with gene mutations, so will new and different ones. Even if we cured all of the current disabilities, there would always be new ones, likely developing as fast as we can cure the existing ones.

Additionally, a lot of disability is not congenital. People who are in accidents and lose legs will never be able to regrow those legs. Even if eugenicists managed to prevent any "deformed" babies from being born without limbs, people would lose them from accidents and infection, and all kinds of things.

In a world where all congenital disabilities were cured, what quality of life do you expect people in wheelchairs to have?

Because I think I can confidently say that, if everything congenital were cured, a day wouldn't pass before accessibility laws were thrown out the window. We would be returned to the days where disabled people are hidden away and can't leave the house - kept as shameful secrets by families who resent them, or shown off as paragons of strength and virtue when/if they're able to be fitted with a working prosthetic.

Neither of these outcomes is positive.

The Slippery Slope of Cure Ideology

So, on to another argument: there is a lot of danger in letting cure ideology go unchallenged.

I want to clarify again, that I don't think we should never research cures. I'm challenging, specifically, the social movement behind cures that is often driven by eugenicism and ableism.

So, why is it dangerous to let that exist? Well, let's look back at the reason I mentioned that people are in camp 2: they are afraid of being uncomfortable. They are afraid of what's different from them. They view difference as a problem to be solved - a disease or a disorder.

You can see this exact principle in action when people fight for a cure for autism. It's being fought for by the allistics who know people with autism, not usually the autistics themselves. It's being fought for by parents who are angry that their child is different or won't look them in the eyes. They see them as an obstacle to overcome, not as a person who has a different way of socializing. Even in the best case, where they see them as a person more than a problem, they are seen as a person with a wrong and disordered way of socializing.

Imagine, for a moment, that there was an allistic trait that people treated as disordered or wrong the way an ableist might treat hand-flapping or lining up toys. Let's take a direct comparison - something one does when they're happy - like laughing. Imagine, for a moment, that something you do when you're joyful, is treated like a maladaption. Perhaps, in this alternate universe, smiling is normal, but laughing is disturbing to people. You spend your life desperately trying to repress your laughter, hiding your joy, even though it's the most natural thing in the world to you. How would you feel hearing people chanting positively, with smiles, taking donations, running marathons and dancing, all for a cure for laughter?

Really, really, genuinely think about it.

Imagine living your entire life like that.

This doesn't just relate to autism.

The reason this ideology has to be challenged is not just by the concrete example of people trying to cure autism, it's the root of the ideology, that different is bad. That the majority being uncomfortable means the minority is wrong and needs to be fixed.

Is this ringing any other bells for you? Because autism isn't the only thing I desperately hope they don't find a genetic link for.

If fighting for a cure for anything people deem different and weird enough goes unchallenged, people will attempt to cure anything they don't like. Like being gay. Or being trans.

And I'm not talking about conversion camps that try to brainwash you into thinking you're not gay. I'm not talking about the abusive Christian approach, I'm talking about the eugenicist scientist approach.

If a genetic link were found or if there was some kind of actual biological difference, that could mean people trying to test fetuses for the "homosexuality gene" or whatever. It would give a concrete path for eugenicists to try preventing gay and trans people from ever even being born.

And, if that biological connection is found, how long do you think it would take for people to start excitedly pushing for a cure to "homosexuality" or "transgenderism"?

What is the point of this post?

It's food for thought.

I want, not only my abled followers, but my disabled ones as well, to reflect on how they feel about cures - about being cured or about curing others.

I want you all to ask yourself, am I in camp 1 or camp 2?

Your goal in supporting a cure should be to prevent death, to prevent pain that cannot be overcome through systemic support and accessibility, to help people live lives with quality.

Your goal in supporting a cure should never be to remove something that makes you uncomfortable. If you're abled, it should never be to make your life easier or alleviate your feelings of guilt, resentment, or stress. It should never be to make people normal, especially not people you care about.

And, on a final note, remember that the things you see in a disability you know nothing about may not have anything to do with reality. If you see a disability for the first time and you immediately wish for a cure for it, simply because it looks painful, maybe find out if it actually is first. Sometimes we attribute pain and misery to things that are no big deal to the people dealing with them. And, in doing so, we also attribute heroicism and virtue to the people dealing with them - which they did not ask for.

Don't make disabled people into a project. Don't use them as inspiration porn - putting them on a pedestal and using them as proof that "anything is possible."

Treat disabled people with dignity and respect.

Treat disabled people as people, with or without them jumping through every hoop you think will make them better.

Think about how fucking annoying it would be if, every time you got up from a chair in public, everyone stared at you, or even praised you for it. How uncomfortable would you be if no one ever saw you as yourself but as some kind of ambassador for strong, amazing people who are so so so cool because they can tie their shoelaces.

Think about how fucking infuriating it would be if every tenth person you walked past turned to you, looking sad, and said "god bless you."

Think about how old that would get, and how fast.

That's all. Just think about it.

[bunbeeplays]

The Lemon Legacy: Generation 1, Chapter 95 - A New Forever

Xander and Ophelia bring Gemma home the next day, and they are obsessed with her.

Xander: Who's Daddy's little object? Is it you? Yes it is!

Ophelia gets started on creating a supply of milk. She should probably not do it in front of a window that people walk in front of all the time, but hey, she's tired. Give her a break, she's doing her breast.

After a successful pumping session, Ophelia gets a call from her gran, who's on her way.

Eve: You still haven't told me her name!

Ophelia: You'll see!

Eve: Ophelia Marie, if you named that child after me-

Ophelia: I didn't, I promise. I know you think that's corny.

Ophelia finally gets to make those biscuits she abandoned after going into labor and when she finishes up, she sees Eve let herself in.

Eve: Are those my famous biscuits?

Ophelia: You know it! Want some?

Eve: I've eaten these a million times, I want to see my great-grandbaby!

Ophelia: Here she is!

Eve: She's beautiful, sweet pea. Now quit being so secretive about her name so I know what to call her!

Ophelia: Well, growing up, you talked about how you always wanted a daughter…

Eve: And I had your shitbag dad instead. Yes, I remember.

Ophelia: What did you always tell me you would have named your daughter if you had one, a name you loved?

Eve: …Oh Fifi, you didn't.

Ophelia: Gran, meet Gemma Lemon.

Gemma: spits up

Eve: You're a sweetheart, you know that?

Ophelia: I learned from the best.

Eve: Most people wouldn't really call me 'sweet'.

Ophelia: Well, you definitely taught me not to take any shit.

Eve: You're damn right I did.

Eve: You didn't have to name her that for my sake.

Ophelia: The name is important to you! And besides, it's beautiful. I knew you'd be mad if I named her Evelyn so this was my best bet.

Eve: Well, it's an honor. I know you'll be a great mother, sweetheart. I'm proud of you.

After Evelyn leaves to catch a loading screen back to Sulani, it's dinner time.

Xander: Alright, dinner and a show!

Ophelia: Stop it! I'm pumping milk for your daughter! This is not sexy.

Xander: Agree to disagree.

Said milk gets fed to Gemma before everyone goes to bed.

Ophelia: Slow down, you little milk monster! We don't want you to get an upset tummy.

Meanwhile, in Sulani, it's time for someone else to go to bed too.

Eve slowly dances with her partner, Kaipo, before it's time for both of them to turn in.

Eve: Gemma's beautiful, Kai. Ophelia's going to be fine, I just know it.

Kaipo: I still think you should have told her.

Eve: I couldn't bring myself to. She's so happy… She'll get through it. She's got a good husband, and that beautiful little girl. I've had a long, long, LONG life, Kaipo. Damn bodybuilder aspiration. It's my time.

Kaipo: I know. I will miss you, Evelyn.

Eve: You too, darling.

And with that, Evelyn Lemon goes to sleep for the last time.

Eve wakes up.

Even though she finds herself laying in sand, her back doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts, actually

When Eve stands up, her knees don't pop. The wrinkles on her hands are gone. She feels like a brand new Sim.

She sees a man staring out into the distance. It can't be… can it?

When he turns around, her heart feels like it's going to jump out of her chest.

Eve: Walt… is that really you?

Walt: The one and only. I know I look a little different than the last time you saw me. I'm a lot less old… and a lot less bald.

The two kiss for the first time in over a decade.

Eve: Oh, Walt. You missed so much. Richard, he and Jane disowned Ophelia but she's excelling. She's a Rising Star, and she just started a family-

Walt: I know, dear. I've been watching.

Eve: So you know about Kaipo.

Walt: Yes. I'm glad you had someone to enjoy your last days with. I don't know how this afterlife stuff works completely, but maybe I'll get to meet him someday and thank him.

Eve: So uh… did you ever watch us do it?

Walt: …I missed you, Eve.

Welcome to the Forever Save, Eve.

Thanks for being the mother figure Ophelia deserved.

[ladlez]

a/n edit: I'm so MAD i typed this out about 5 days ago then didn't post it, and now with the update it's slightly irrelevant because it is being more discussed BUT here this is anyway –

sorry but I'm thinking about how we recently learned that Wild knew an older/ghost(?) Twilight during his journey. I've read so many fics with this premise but 95% of the time it's a younger twi who remembers being a companion, and now we have a canon that is clearly not that...

thinking back over the content of the comic so far I'm going crazy thinking about how for all that time, for every moment we've seen so far, wild knew.

Twi has been brooding and tight-lipped about his connection to Time, but it's been an underlying thing we (the readers) are aware of. And it's pure tragedy, for us and for Twi, knowing what Time's fate will be. Wild, meanwhile, must know something of Twilight's fate. which, narratively, is [dial-up-modem noises]. It's about the time-travel-fuckery!!! It's about the tragedy of one having met the other before, but the other doesn't know— but for three people! Twi silently bears the loneliness of knowing someone who doesn't know him, of knowing a version of Time who doesn't yet exist. Twi carries this burden of knowledge, while (apparently?) being oblivious to the fact that the other member of the chain he's particularly close to carries the same knowledge about him. [edit: yesterday's update implies that wild has explained to twilight that they've met before, but we still don't know how much he revealed, so...]

we've seen the way the knowledge affects twi

But we haven't until now seen any hint of how knowing of Twilight's fate affects wild. We haven't even seen a hint that he knew more. Why????

His close relationship to twilight is evident but there's an easiness between them. Wild has never gazed after twilight solemnly...

...has never had the air of secrecy and tension with twi that twi has with time.

And ok this could just be something jojo missed or didn't think about, but why did wild say this about companions, if he apparently had one the whole time?

Wild has been a largely light-hearted personality among the group so far and he has appeared to be very honest about his journey, but this maybe blows that all open by implying how much he's been hiding about what he knows. He can't have told twi much of anything, if twi thinks he had no companion.

AND while we know the story of Twilight and Time from TP (except any changes jojo might have made that we haven't seen), what happened between Wild and Wolfie is a complete mystery to us! It's a story that's entirely jojo's creation! So... What was their relationship like? What was Twi like, being noticeably older? Was he alive and dragged to another time, or was he a spirit? We saw him with both wild and zelda—

wild's long hair implies this moment didn't occur pre-calamity, while zelda's long hair implies it was before the point pre-TOTK when she cut it shorter, so probably not long after they defeated ganon? Which means wolfie, having met wild soon after he emerged from the shrine of resurrection, was still around after wild's journey? What happened to him? Did he leave, and did they get to say goodbye? Or were they still together when wild hopped through that portal? Did wild ever know wolfie was actually Hylian, let alone a hero, or did he have to figure that out when he met Twilight for the first time? Was twi ever able to turn into his human form and actually speak to wild? Who or what brought him to the botw era?

If he's a spirit, same as Time - what is twilight going to regret so much that he sticks around?

Has wild altered his interactions with twi because of this? knowing that whatever twi finds out about him now, could prepare him for when he meets the younger wild... [edit: Plus now we know wild had some kind of intense reaction upon first meeting twi]

obviously i imagine (hope) we get answers to some of these in the comic, but i also think this new info is so ripe for us making content and I've hardly seen anything beyond the initial keysmash reactions. because this is genuinely making me 🤯🧐 Especially the parallel but clearly different dynamics of twilight & time VS. wild and twilight; the knowing and not knowing, the "one day you'll meet a younger me, and I won't know you, but here and now, i know you while you don't know me".

And, as a sidenote, all this is making me think— is wind the only one who has been honest about what he knows about his predecessor...?

[standardquip]

My pond is gone: A follow-up

For those who don't know, I use the tag #sqland to talk about what I do on my property. It is mostly about my pond, which was amazing. I had it for ~5 years, and expanded it every year.

[Tumblr kept failing to upload my photos so this post has some but far fewer than I wanted. Boo.]

When I expanded it last year, I started having problems with my septic system's leach field (aka a drain field). I had built my pond directly above my field. At the time, I saw pipes and just worked around them and didn't think anything of it. I later learned that that can destroy a drain field. So, do not do that.

I had to get my entire drain field replaced, which cost a little over ten thousand USD. They tore up my whole back yard to do it. Before they did that, I disassembled the pond myself so I could save all my plants and re-use all the stone in a future endeavor. The pond is currently a series of kiddie pools. This has somehow not deterred toads and frogs laying eggs in them.

Anyway, during the replacement of the field, I learned there was so much wrong with it that I was frankly surprised it ever worked in the first place. Even without the pond, half of it was not working at all. Each subsequent pond expansion cut off the ability of another finger to disperse water, and the latest one cut off the last available finger. That's why my septic system failed.

The field was uneven, criss-crossed, not deep enough, collapsed and full of holes it was not supposed to have. Some of these problems may have been caused by the pond. But most of them didn't appear to be.

I found a new location for the pond - far at the back of my property, where a shed used to be - it's not as close to my house but at least I can still see it from the window.

I order heavy duty 40mil pond liner. This is expensive and, more importantly, extremely heavy. The people redoing my leach field let me pay them to take my old pond liner to the dump. It weighed (literally, not figuratively) half a ton. My new pond plan is about 30 x 40ft so it will probably weigh more, and, due to the new (further away) location, will be absolutely impossible to move by myself (I paid the freight driver 20 bucks to help me roll it to the location last time) and honestly, probably might not even be able to move it without machinery.

For that reason, I haven't even started digging the new pond yet (PS: I dug all the last ponds by myself with a normal shovel!). I'm not sure how to deal with the liner situation and if I have to ask for help from a neighbor's skidsteer again, at that point why even bother digging the pond by hand? Why not use his mini excavator too? lmao.

But I'm getting off-subject here.

Every year, I have 1-2 "big projects" that my parents usually help me with. This year's big project (before the leach field issue) was going to be to redo my front yard so it had no grass and finish landscaping it. When the drain field was replaced, I asked them to not put down any grass seed. So my backyard was straight up dirt and nothing else. No more weeds anymore, either. This presented a unique opportunity....

So this year's project ended up being to landscape the front AND back yards. We didn't 100% finish either of them, but we got maybe 90 - 95% done while my mom was here.

Now that summer's hitting, expect more #sqland posts not about the pond. Because the gardens are doing great!!

[thestandardgirl]

hello

I've been writing since forever. It's the only way I can express myself. When I was about 5 years old and didn’t know how to write, I once took a piece of paper and a pencil and took it to my mother, and I asked her to write down my memoirs like Emília from Sítio do Pica Pau Amarelo (a Brazillian TV show for kids). ''What memories do you have, you're only 5 years old'' was the answer I heard. I think I just wanted to record my life. I needed to write some things down before I forgot what I was thinking about.

so, ever since I learned to write, I have had my diaries and filled them with my anguish. When I was a teenager, I used to write on tumblr, because I was afraid my mother would read my diary (I caught her doing that once, but that's a topic for another day). I love to reread what I was feeling at a certain time in my life. the other day I was reading about how I was suffering from crush on a guy at school, more or less in 2015, and today I don't even remember who that guy was. I don't even remember his name, much less his face. funny how things work. will it be that 10 years from now I'll read in my diary about how I'm grieving for my breakup with my most current ex, and think ''wow, how silly of me, I don't even remember him properly''? I really hope so. because now it seems that this pain will never go away.

but anyway. about me and my writing. I am that person who avoids conflicts as much as possible. I don't know how to talk when it's time to fight, I don't know how to think under pressure, I don't like to talk. if someone yells at me, I cry. I decided to go for the academic route at university precisely for that reason. I like to research and write my findings. if you don't agree, you can write an article refuting me. if I find it pertinent, I write another reply. no face to face, no clash.

and I love to read. my favorite genres are fantasy and romance. 95% of what I read is fiction. I love living other people's lives, falling in love with vampires and fighting epic battles - things I wouldn't have the courage to experience in my real life. it hasn't been long since this desire arose, but I started wanting to write myself. create my own stories and perhaps support someone like my favorite authors support me. but I still don't feel ready for that. I think I still need to grow a lot with my writing. I'm insecure, and I'm afraid of finishing a project like this and not feeling comfortable with the end result - I think I also end up being too much of a perfectionist sometimes.

I'm also not a very creative person in the artistic sense of the word. I don't know how to play any instruments, or draw, or cut paper and create collages. no matter how hard I tried, and took classes in all sorts of activities, my brief dreams of being an architect or fashion designer or actress/singer were always just that: brief and dreams. but with writing it is not like that. I don't need fancy and specific materials, nor a gigantic idea right from the start; I can control and write little by little; I can go back to the beginning and change something without it compromising too much of the rest of the text.

that's why I'm here! I think writing these texts reflecting on my life is a good way to start this writing career - also because this is not my career, so unfortunately I'm not fully dedicated to writing and I have bills to pay…. and anonymity is also something that comforts me. for now, the only way for me to publish anything and not throw up with anxiety of people I know reading it, is under a pseudonym. I'm not ready for people to know me personally, and I'm afraid of possible confrontations for the truths I intend to write about.

in short: I haven't revolutionized anything yet, I haven't had any brilliant ideas to save the world, I haven't even figured out how to deal with my own insignificant problems. but I hope to find all of that. and also to find someone to talk about life.

yours sincerely,

standard girl

[popculturebuffet]

Clone High President's Day Special Review: (Escape to Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand and Episode 2: Election Blu-Galoo) (Comissioned by WeirdKev27... wesley)

Tonight, on a special presidents day review of clone high

(Clears throat)

WAY WAY BACK IN THE 2000'S TWO FUTURE SUCCESFUL COMEDIANS TOOK SOME FAMOUS GUYS AND LADIES AND MADE THEM INTO A CULT CLASSIC COMEDY

NOW THE SHOWS GETTING A REBOOT NOW IT'S GONNA MAKE IT IF IT TRIES BUT UNTIL IT GETS RELEASED IT'S TIME TO LAUGH SHIVER AND CRY WITH THE ORIGNIAL CLONNNE HIGGGHHH YEAHHHH…

Honestly i'm suprised it took me this long to clone high, nor that I did our presidents say special last year and never even thought of this as an option.

In case the intro wasn't clear enough, for presidents day we're looking at one of the best shows MTV ever made, Clone High, a 2002 animated comedy about a bunch of clones of famous historical figures made into clones back in the 80s who are now teens living through a giant parody of teen dramas both at the time and in the past, with most of the episodes modeled after your various teen drama tropes which having watched a few (Degrassi, 90210 (both versions), Secret LIfe of An American Teenager) made it hilarious to me, as it matches the genre point for point while also adding in it's own zany looney tunes humor.

Naturally such a wholly weird premise.. didn't really take off and MTV canceled it the first excuse they got, but it's spot on humor, great voice acting, fun animation and brilliant premise and satire meant the show got the cult following it desreved.. and eventually came back by popular demand as it's creators ended up becoming two of the biggest names in animation, making the lego movie, the lego batman movie and Spider-man INto The Spider Verse into massive hits. While it's return is still cooking, and sadly coming to HBO Max, which at the time was a big HELL YES from me, now has me worreid they may prevent us from getting more than two seasons.. though given Paramount is both behind the series and could easily bring it to plus if it's popular enough, i'm not too worried. So while we wait , we can celebrate with the clones of two dead presidents mr. b, as we dive into the first two episodes of the show: Escape To Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand and Episode 2: Election Blu-Galoo. So come under the cut with me for some angst that's entertaning.

Escape To Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand

From the outset what the series is is clear.. not just from the throughly kickass themesong that perfectly fits the ti me, but from it's characters, who are easily recognizable both to anyone even casually aware of history.. and anyone whose seen at least one teen drama or movie: You have Abe Lincoln (Will Forte who would show up in pretty much everything this duo made after this), as our bland protaganist who wants to get with the popular girl Cleopatra (Christa Miller), your standard rich bitch popular girl and his only friends: Joan (Of Arc) (VA Legend Nicole Sullivan) , a moody goth who hides her fairly obvious crush on him, and Ghandi (Micheal McDonald), a wannabe party animal whose desperate to fit in. Basically the David Silver of the group. Rounding them out is macho jock rival JFK (Chris MIller himself doi) who genuinely thinks his clone dad was "a super macho stud who conquered the moon".

To get the elephants out of the room quick.. yes casting the white Miller and McDonald was a mistake and one the reboot hopefully avoids, though I would like to see much like say central park or x-men 95, the two actors get other parts in the series. They just don't need to play these two. I accept it to a point as of the time and the industry, as we're only three years out from it being standard to match a characters race to their va every time, but it's still something to not dance around either: They screwed up, their not doing it again in the reboot decades later, so I won't be that hard ont hem.

Speaking of the reboot while it has leaked.. I haven't watched it. I saw a screencap or too because people reblogged it without being considrate that you know.. not everyone WANTS to steal from creators who have waited for this a long ass time, and woudl rather wait. I'm fine if say HBO Max fucks up and puts it on the platform itself early (as it did iwth the first ep of close enough ) or the creators air the episode at a public event for consumption (As seen with owl house and again close enough), but I won't cover something nor talk about it till offical release and won't watch it unless it has been released in some offical capacity.

Now that's out of the way, the episode is dammingly spot on and it's telling teen dramas haven't changed THAT much. I mean I still hope for that degrassi reboot but this show shows the only real change would be diffrent music, though the use of music of the time, while likely why it took till this year to finally stream on paramount+, really helps sell it. It had been a while since I watched these two eps, having not watched the series since breaking out my dvds a few years back. And yes I got that lucky as I found it at fye for only 15 or 20 bucks nearly a decade ago and have held tight to those two discs ever since. It's even the canadian dvd complete with teletoon ads. It's glorious.

But from the "sexy teens' moniker flaunting sexualizing teens despite the characters being underage (though most teen shows sidestep this by hiring older actors and actresses it's still weird and creepy), to the music, the delviery is spot on, with most of the deliveirs sounding just like a teen drama's overdramatic yet whispery way of doing things.. yet saying rediculous shit. It's essentailly the animted euqilveant of airplane, taking a dramatic overblown genre and throwing all sorts of weird shit in, in this case from the premise down. While the plot of Abe and Ghandi trying to get beer for a party so Abe can take his shot with Cleo is pretty stock the fact it's abe and the party dude clone of Ghandi of all people trying to have genghis kahn fake his way into buying beer… and failing horribly that nails it, or having JFK Boiled down to his most embarassing and sexist traits, being mad at cleo for kissing abe later.. while making out with someone else. The cast is all time greats, so it's no shock they pull it off great.

The plot itself is again pretty stock and by the num bers teen pilot: Abe and Ghandi try to get beer but end up getting nonalcholic, Joan tears up at Abe kissing cleo but ultimately tries to push her towards him, Cleo ends up with JFK but hints she still clearly likes abe, and now you know the plot. Oh and Joan tasers Ghandi for ignoring the teen ine she set up. It's just mixed up with various clones from two elvises one pre addiction and svengaling by col parker, one post, a teacher whose half sheep and voiced by a literal and figurative dick, and the local nerd being george washington carver who made his own little peanut sidekick, along with just general madness such as the principal sending Cleo to the maze of death, Ghandi going out a 30 story window and the two best characters in the show.

They are Principal Cinnamon Scudworth, voiced by Lord and his best friend/possible husband and robot butler Mr. Butlertron, played by Miller, and while everyone else does well, Lord and Miller steal their own show as these two are essentailly the Perry the Platapus and Dr. Doofensmirtz of the early 2000s': two scene stealing characters squared away int heir own wacky subplots that rarely seriously impact the main plot, or more Doofenschmirtz and Norm but semantics.

Scudworth is the principal employed by the board of shadowy figures to make these clones into super soldiers… a plan that dosen't quite work as each clone has baggage from their original, a nicely implimented bit that adds some depth: Abe feels stuck in the shadow of his far more confident clone father, Joan became a goth entirely because she isn't sure she can be hers, Ghandi became a party animal because he's entirely sure he can't, and JFK and CLeo are stuck on the suprfical beauty of their selves. i'ts nicely done. Scudworth meanwhile plans to make a theme park.

Really though Scudworth's just there to be thrust by the board or his own stupidity into various shenanigans while Mr. B helps him out and it is glroious. I could watch a whole show of these two alone but honestly they fit perfectly here, their weird over the top antics perfectly fitting the world and contrasting how straight everyone else plays this very stupid world. Scudworth is a cartoon villian in a teen drama high school and his out of placeness just makes him that much more delightful.

For this episode Scudworth has to write a report on being a teen and after a failed interview with joan and sending her to the maze of death, which again everyone is so used to Joan getting dropped in from it dosen't even faze Ghandi, inflitrates the party.. and ends up beaten as a pinata as "Cloney Student'. It's just a taste of what he'll get into, but it's one of the best parts of an already stellar pilot. Escape to Beer MOutnain is hilarious, nicely paced and just PACKED with jokes with most having aged well. Only one or two didn't really work like Joan calling a masculine elanor rosevelt "him" and her oggling joan as she walks away, which is just.. eugh…. but overall the episode is fantastic and if you haven't watched the show, go check it out.

Episode Two: Election Blu-Galoo

And the second episode.. is even better as with the premise out of the way, the comedy ramps up further. It also gives JFK more to do. He was funny enough in the first episode, coming back to wash his hands, grappling with gay dads, and after Cleo leaves to decide who she wants he offers Abe a nacho for no real reason. But this episode really lets him shine as the oversexed idiot we know and love.

In this case Cleo wants to still be Student Body President, but for some reason Clone High has term limits, so she enlists JFK as her maleable pawn to shadow govern the school. Abe runs because he thinks Cleo is into JFK because he's a good leader, and runs on the issues before that sputters out entirely in the face of JFK campaniging soley on his abs.

This one has a scudworth plot impact the main plot a bit more than usual, as Scudworth , hard up for cash for his evil plan since the board outright refuses to give him money( Just for fun i'm going to keep saying no until you hang up…" ). Enter the X-Treme Blu Trio, three totally rad execs who spend the episode screaming nonsense..e xcept for their third and best member X-Treme Bob who instead says things like "I HAVE NO SELF ESTEEM!" and "MY SON WON'T EVEN LOOK ME IN THE EYE ANYMORE!". Their played by the Scrubs trio of Zack Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke, who all did this for a free as a favor to producer Bill Lawrence of Spin City, Scrubs and Cougar Town fame. And as a fan of Spin City and Cougar Town I love his involvment and most of these actors. Faison in paticular did a LOT of rolls for the show, including George Washington Carver.

At any rate Scudworth gladly sells out and naturally blows it all having only seen 2/3 of MC Hammer's behind the music and concluded money is endless, while the three sellout goons approach abe to do stunts and promote their brand. He and joan fall out, he eventually comes around after extreme blu (just blue housepaint and pancake batter) nearly kilsl Ghandi, it's all pretty great.

Naturally what makes the episode are the jokes, with some all timers. Some I can't really recitie here but one that really gets the teen drama and is clearly parodying dawsons creek has Abe and Joan on seperate docks starring compelatively.. only for it to reveal their on docks right next to each other, with Abe leaving with an utterly nonsense speech on their friendship ending that Will Forte somehow gives as if he were a teen hearthrob "You know what hurts the most? This nail I stepped on". It's pure poetry and if you want to get someone into the show, this is the easiest way.. that or showing them any second of scudworth, but this gets the point across more.

We also.. get a song from Marilyn Manson which at the time was a funny way to bend his image.. but now comes off as "Yikes we accidently had a sexual preadator on our show! ", ditto for Andy Dick but he mostly plays smaller characters while Marilyn Manson's role is a pretty big cameo and thus sticks out more and is harder to overlook. It makes the once utterly hiarious gag of JFK calling him "Scary Andgogyns White Guy" far less funny.

Even with this unfortunate cameo that is no way the shows fault, this episode is still spectacular and that goes for the series as a whole. If your remotely intrestd in this series go watch it, it's on paramount+ and if you don't have that i'ts on mtv.com for free. So check it out before the revival, the series is well worth it and is easily one of the funniest shows i've seen. I forgot just how constant and excellent the jokes were since i'd seen the series last but it's comic genius and was a sign of things to come from this duo. Thanks for reading.

[radley-writes]

Are you wanting to publish a second book? If so, do you know which one?

Ain't that the big question?

Ngl, the reception to Dressage Dragons has been a bit tragic.

That book is my baby - it's considerably more coherent in terms of structure than Strictly, which is politely described as an 'adhd fest (positive)', and I am far more confident in the character-work. All of my betas loved it (it's the only book I've ever written where no betas dropped out!). My agent and others at the agency loved it, and I had very few editorial notes to work through!

But it's set very firmly in the UK, and I suspect that hasn't helped when selling to a USA market which isn't nearly so interested in UK-based stories as it used to be.

I went to auction with Strictly, relatively quick. But DD hasn't had any bites yet.

All the feedback I've received has been 'love it but sadly have no space for it on my list', or 'I just don't like the voice, sorry' (fair enough - it's very voicey, and if editors don't gel, there's nothing I can do about that). So at least I'm confident that there aren't major problems with the story itself!

Currently, we're out on subs with British publishers, just to see if they're any more receptive. Response times are very long at the moment, so I won't know further details until the approximate heat-death of the universe. But I have accepted (with the help of lots of chocolate and snivelling into the fur of my cat) that DD might not find a tradpub home.

The good news: it'll still definitely be published! I'll rework the ending to make it a standalone rather than first in a duology, then self-pub.

The bad news: I suck at marketing. And I need to figure out how to effectively self-pub.

So, depending on timings, the next book to publish will EITHER be Dressage Dragons, traditionally or otherwise, OR Liesmyth!

Some of you will remember my flight of fancy with His Majesty's Starship. Fear not - I haven't forgotten that story. However, my agent and I agreed that it would work better as a duology rather than a single whopping book that has 0 breathing space. As a result, it needs A LOT of reworking, and frankly, I'm too lazy. I'll undoubtedly return to it someday, but for now, I have so many other projects sat half- (or, 95% finished) on my laptop that I need to polish off!

I'm never going to be the fastest writer, thanks to a) disability, b) mental illness, c) the fact that I'm currently training for a separate full-time career that is considered very fast-paced and energy-draining by able-bodied neurotypicals (have I made a massive mistake with my life? maybe so. But I need money lol).

I'm perfectly happy being a slow writer and slow publisher - though sadly, the industry is geared towards people who can churn out new work rapidly. There will be more from me, but it might not be for a wee while! And I'm very, very grateful to my amazing agent, Beth Marshea, for being so understanding and believing in me every step of the way. x

[followedmystar]

Sup y'all

Here's a brief long update. The last one I posted here apparently happened less than a week before Shit Got Real™. It has been a w i l d ride. Things are more or less fine now! But here's what I've been doing!

TW: medical details, infertility, getting the shit kicked out of me by life

Highlight reel from July 2021:

July 3: Hosted 'Murica Day party at our house, had a lovely time. I had the bright idea to set up a slip n slide. Promptly broke tailbone using said bright idea.

July 4: Rented a trencher to run power and water line from the house to our future chicken coop site. Hit the water main to the house while trenching. (Yes we called 811 beforehand, no they didn't mark the main, they didn't mark a damn thing past the meter tbh)

July 4 thru like 11: fixing the issue in 95+ degree (F) heat with broken tailbone and restoring water service (we are Rural™ so it was all us)

July 15: I was in bed and needed to blow my nose. I decided to sit up while doing that. (TLDR: don't do that) I felt a Bad Thing at the base of my skull and had instant severe headache...that persisted for the next several months.

July 16+: ER visit after ER visit. Scan after scan. So many scans.

It took them a while to figure it out (we thought it was an unruptured aneurysm or something at first), but it turns out I had a pituitary tumor that started hemorrhaging (aka pituitary apoplexy), resulting in severe headaches, light sensitivity, intolerance to exercise/increased BP, taste and smell distortions, and pain that refused to respond to medication until, uh, about Halloween when I had surgery.

To say that I've had a lifetime's worth of doc appointments in the last year would be an understatement. I got fabulous care but I never want to see a neurosurgeon again. There are a bunch of meds I will be on forever. We will need IVF to have kids (that's coming down the pipe next year hopefully!). I had the energy level of a spent AAA battery for most of '22.

But--for now--I'm good. No headaches. I have a roughly normal amount of energy. And exertion doesn't leave me in bed the next day!

I'm still collecting specialists like Pokemon unfortunately. That part's exhausting. Medical fatigue is real y'all.

FANDOM RELATED UPDATES:

Tentoo x Rose is still *chef's kiss*

I'm totally not sure how I feel about the upcoming special. I haven't read ANY tumblr takes on it, and i'm not looking for spoilers, so we're just going to have to hope they don't heck it up

I wasn't always crazy about 13's episodes but I LOVED jodie as 13 and i want her on repeat forever

Not sure how many of you do anime, but Spy X Family has my whole heart. WHOLE. HEART.

i miss fanfiction

i also miss this hellsite

HOW HAVE YOU ALL BEEN THO FOR REAL

[jodilin65]

On a scale of 1 to 10, my fatigue is a definite 10 today. While I was in a good mood yesterday, today I feel frustrated and hopeless. I really fear I'm never going to resolve this problem and find out everything that's causing it, much less what to do about it. So much for thinking the waterbed and the vitamins were my saviors because they're not.

I can say that I definitely slept poorly. Had to get up to pee and just kept waking up a lot. It still seems that my body should have slept long enough to make up for it, though. Even a nap later on didn't help. I'm just physically exhausted through and through. I still don't know if it's mostly tied into my sleep, the Zyrtec I took yesterday, something I ate, my thyroid, or if I've simply developed chronic fatigue. Even on the days I have energy, it's still not like it used to be.

I really would have loved to have been able to test my TSH the day I felt wound up as well as today. Tom said he keeps checking to see if there’s a home test available. When there is, I'm sure it will cost a fortune. You can now test your A1C for just $65, but you only get four tests.

I would really love to try a custom mouthguard for sleep apnea for a while and see if that helped. I did notice that after I got back into bed after getting up to pee, I felt short of breath. It was almost like I couldn't take a deep enough breath. This lasted a little while, and then I drifted back off only to wake up many times along the way.

Maybe it was the subconscious stress of worrying about being woken up by the storm, but unlike every other storm I've experienced here that's either all thunder and no rain or a mix of both, this was 95% rain. I was definitely right to believe this would be a wetter summer because it's never rained that much that long so far since being here. It went on and on all night long without much of a break. It was nice and soothing to hear the sound of the rain. It's also amazing just how much the ground can absorb here. If it rained like this in Arizona or even California or Oregon, we would be flooded to hell and back. We did get flooded a few times during monsoon storms in Arizona.

The good thing is that I was surprised to hear from Adonis from his account in his real name, even though he'll always be Adonis to me. I sent him a message a while back telling him that Facebook wouldn't let me add him, and when I didn't get a reply, I figured he got sick of me and ghosted. But then I got a message saying that the same thing happened with his niece and that Facebook was weird. It still wouldn't let me add him, but I replied to his message and allowed for friend requests. He's following me, and he liked one of my comments in a public group, which was a little strange. I know Facebook is anti-privacy even though they claim otherwise, but I wish all groups were private. It shouldn't be anybody's business but the group members’ what I'm sharing in groups. Nothing I do or that anyone else does should be anyone's business unless we choose to make it their business.

A little worried to find I only got one shitty-paying job available to me today. Also, I expected my pending jobs to pay up, but they haven't. Let me guess, since all good things have to come to an end, this is when I start making less and less money, right? Yet he's getting tons of jobs, which he says is only because he's old and that they seem to have a lot of studies for old people. Yeah, and I've always seemed to have a no-making-money rule on me. 🙁

Apparently, the ants of Florida are invincible. The hurricane rains rinsed off the ant spray Tom sprayed outside the kitchen window, which is where they’re getting in, and now they’re back. One was in the sink, and I scalded it with hot water. A few minutes later, there it was climbing out of the sink drain. I sprayed it with ant spray, and it was still running to climb the walls of the sink, so I finally hosed it back down and sprayed the area some more, including around the inside of the window.

I had tons of dreams last night, even though I only remember bits and pieces of them. I was discussing multi-dimensions and space-time with Tom and telling him I didn't get how space-time worked, and then I was unable to find my purse, which seems to be a popular dream I have.

Then I dreamed I was dancing again and quickly had to quit because of my schedule and sleep issues. I really liked the extra money and was really depressed at the thought of quitting, knowing I couldn't explain why to anyone at the club or my parents, who seemed to be alive in the dream because I knew they either wouldn't get it or wouldn't believe me.

So I draped a light jacket over my shoulders and began to walk home to wherever I lived, but before I got very far, I realized I had forgotten my purse and hurried back nearly in a panic. What is it with me and purse dreams? Used to be being naked in public, and now it's the purse.

I then had a dream that the economy was going downhill, and the possibility of another serious recession loomed around the corner. When I told Tom about that dream, he said it wouldn't affect us since he's not working. That much would be great! No doubt about it.

The most worrisome but far from surprising dream was having to increase my thyroid medication. I'm going to do everything I can, however, to keep that from becoming a dream premonition and not just a dream. I just wonder how much of this fatigue is connected to that. Another fear I have is that it's either going to be taking enough meds to have energy but be anxious, or take just enough to keep from being anxious but be exhausted instead. I just can't win no matter what I do.

I also can't shake that dismal feeling that my life is over. Not that I'm going to die anytime soon, of course, which I kind of have mixed emotions about, but I do worry that due to a lack of money and energy, we’ve basically lived our lives. He doesn't feel that way, but that's because he worked for decades. I told him he may feel that way in another decade or so, but he doesn't think so. I hope not, for his sake.

[zuzsenpai]

Work nonsense ahead.

The animations I make for work are generally well received, though I'm limited on the styles I can use based on the program I have access too, specifically when it comes to the "style" of animated people (I can't draw so I rely on a program with already made customizable characters). The character customization and animation options are very robust within each style, but there are only two "styles" to choose from. If that makes sense. I have used one particular style for 95% of the animations I make, because I like how it looks for corporate videos (the other style in my opinion is wildly amateurish and shouldn't be used for anything professional).

Anyway, keep in mind I work for a single company (a healthcare organization), so my "client" is the marketing department who sees all of my work before it goes out to the public. Because I use that one particular style so often, marketing is super familiar with how it looks.

I got a project recently where one of the marketing higher-ups (referred to as marketing partners) wanted to emulate a style they saw from another healthcare organization. Most of it I could do easily, but the "people" in the video they wanted to emulate were obviously not in the styles I have access to. I have been using that one style too much, soI figured I should try my best to give them something else closer to what that wanted.

So.... the best I could do were static images of illustrated people I found through our adobe stock account. It looked similar to the video they liked. I only have basic skills when it comes to animating from scratch in after effects, so I couldn't give these characters a whole lot of movement or customization. If I had used the style in my animation program, I could have made the people do hundreds of different things movement-wise. But yeah. I decided against using my program. In the end, I didn't feel like it was my best work. In my opinion it wasn't terrible, as the "people" weren't a huge focal point of the video's message anyway.

I sent over the draft almost a month ago and haven't heard back. Before I made the project, the marketing partner had been asking me how soon I could get it done, which made me think it was pretty urgent. Usually when I do animations, even for this exact person, I hear back within a few days. I've literally made other smaller projects for her in the meantime and she's gotten back to me right away.

Finally, after a month, I sent another email asking if it was approved or if it needed changes, because I wanted to close the loop on the project. But also because I have been sitting here for a month thinking I did a shitty job on it and this marketing partner doesn't know how to tell me that she would rather scrap it and send it out to a freelancer. I've been feeling inadequate and untalented. Like the fact that I don't know how to draw and can't really animate is finally coming back to bite me in the ass. I sent her that second email around noon yesterday and now it's the end of the following day and I haven't heard back. She's literally answered other emails from me today about other things.

She's definitely drafting a huge email about how she thinks I "missed the mark". I just know it. This is going to reflect poorly on me and my self esteem and I'm going to think about what a shitty job I did every time I make animations from now on. And honestly? If I had just used the fucking program, maybe I wouldn't be in this mess. But I use it so often that I was worried the marketing partner would tell me to do something else. And yet... now all I want to do is email her again and tell her I'll start over and make it better with my tried and true program. Please don't farm it out to a freelancer. I'm useless to the company if I miss the mark and we farm it out. Useless.