#or you're on the outside looking in

[navybrat817]

The urge to interact online while simultaneously not wanting to interact out of fear of being annoying or because you feel like you don't belong. 😂😭

[hellyeahsickaf]

I found an extremely dope disability survival guide for those who are homebound, bedbound, in need of disability accommodations, or would otherwise like resources for how to manage your life as a disabled person. (Link is safe)

It has some great articles and resources and while written by people with ME/CFS, it keeps all disabilities in mind. A lot of it is specific to the USA but even if you're from somewhere else, there are many guides that can still help you. Some really good ones are:

How to live a great disabled life- A guide full of resources to make your life easier and probably the best place to start (including links to some of the below resources). Everything from applying for good quality affordable housing to getting free transportation, affordable medication, how to get enough food stamps, how to get a free phone that doesn't suck, how to find housemates and caregivers, how to be homebound, support groups and Facebook pages (including for specific illnesses), how to help with social change from home, and so many more.

Turning a "no" into a "yes"- A guide on what to say when denied for disability aid/accommodations of many types, particularly over the phone. "Never take no for an answer over the phone. If you have not been turned down in writing, you have not been turned down. Period."

How to be poor in America- A very expansive and helpful guide including things from a directory to find your nearest food bank to resources for getting free home modifications, how to get cheap or free eye and dental care, extremely cheap internet, and financial assistance with vet bills

How to be homebound- This is pretty helpful even if you're not homebound. It includes guides on how to save spoons, getting free and low cost transportation, disability resources in your area, home meals, how to have fun/keep busy while in bed, and a severe bedbound activity master list which includes a link to an audio version of the list on Soundcloud

Master List of Disability Accommodation Letters For Housing- Guides on how to request accommodations and housing as well as your rights, laws, and prewritten sample letters to help you get whatever you need. Includes information on how to request additional bedrooms, stop evictions, request meetings via phone, mail, and email if you can't in person, what you can do if a request is denied, and many other helpful guides

Special Laws to Help Domestic Violence Survivors (Vouchers & Low Income Housing)- Protections, laws, and housing rights for survivors of DV (any gender), and how to get support and protection under the VAWA laws to help you and/or loved ones receive housing and assistance

Dealing With Debt & Disability- Information to assist with debt including student loans, medical debt, how to deal with debt collectors as well as an article with a step by step guide that helped the author cut her overwhelming medical bills by 80%!

There are so many more articles, guides, and tools here that have helped a lot of people. And there are a lot of rights, resources, and protections that people don't know they have and guides that can help you manage your life as a disabled person regardless of income, energy levels, and other factors.

Please boost!

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[vaguely-concerned]

the more I play the more I think lucanis basically knows it's illario who betrayed him right from the beginning (he's had a year in the ossuary to think. not that many people knew where he was going. when you ask him 'did Illario know you'd be on that ship' his only answer is the hardest flattest 'yes' you ever heard). so it's not so much about figuring out who the traitor is (because that's ludicrous. we all know. immediately. they didn't really bother to hide it lmao) as about methodically closing off every single avenue of denial lucanis has clung to that whole time with as much or little gentleness as you might prefer until he has no choice but to admit it. because the moment he has to admit it, he'll have to do something -- feel something -- about it. and that's such a catastrophic event in lucanis' inner landscape (he has had TWO people in this whole entire world up until now and will do anything to hold on to them with a heartbreaking child-like desperation, even at and especially through the detriment of his own self) that he'd rather just. not. what if we quite simply. didn't. what if we just stayed here in the emptiness where we can both pretend you didn't hurt me in a way I should never forgive. I have so much practice in that with caterina already it's always worked out great for everyone so far. (press x to fucking doubt but that's trauma logic for you lol)

after everything illario did, so much of the storm of lucanis' emotions around it is 'what the FUCK did you get yourself tangled up in this time and how do I get you out of this mess safely'. what's worse: the fact that your brother murdered you, or that he put himself in horrible danger doing so and thus exposed you to the risk of losing him forever. lucanis' heart certainly has an opinion here and it's fucking unhinged (affectionate)

the themes of dissociation in lucanis' character in general makes me feel nuts. allllll these contradictory messy things he needs to cut off from each other because they can't coexist or be easily reconciled inside him. but all remain stubbornly true separately anyway and will have their due one day. love and resentment. tenderness and fear and rage. terror and longing. love and freedom don't coexist. the burned out golden child anthem is playing in the background. he was always caterina's favourite and he has to keep striving to deserve that dubious honour with every breath he takes and then, presumably, mercifully, some day he will die and be excused and can rest. and until now he's suppressed all the -- natural, healthy, protective! -- negative feelings that threaten the few attachment relationships he actually has, at the cost of ever actually having his needs for connection and safety met and leaving his core self imprisoned and compromised. and spite goes 'what. no. that's dumb fuck that' (*spite voice* I do not understand that and even if I did I would not respect it) and does not allow him to fall back into that, which I think is what saves his life, ultimately. it took being possessed by a demon for lucanis to even contemplate telling anyone he loves 'no' in any way, but hey. whatever gets you there right lol

lucanis is dealing with the freeze response allll the way down baby. and he was even before the ossuary, that just turbo powered it and brought it to a breaking point way before it could happen naturally. but something was going to break eventually no matter what, and I'm just glad that in the end, through the power of friendship and also pure spite, it doesn't have to be him

[redysetdare]

All this aroace character shipcourse has proven to me that a majority of people that interact in fandom cannot actually interact with characters and media outside of shipping and genuinely I believe you need to learn how to interact with media outside of shipping.

[erinwantstowrite]

will peter be like an older brother to miles in lof ?

absolutely he is

there's about an 11 year difference between them (Miles is 14, Peter is 25), so it's a lot more like the older brother type of relationship that Peter has with Tim (despite Tim being his uncle). Peter has mentored(ish) other young heroes by this point (mostly in the Bats' universe) but since Miles is another Spider-Man, Peter takes up most of the responsibility in making sure Miles is safe and teaching him the ropes. That's HIS sassy child genius, thank you, and he's not a sidekick, he's Spider-Man.

He was also adamant that Miles tell his parents immediately, and gets along great with Rio and Jeff.

Which is HILARIOUS to me because at this point in time, Peter has built up a persona for the public eye just like the Bats did. In Rio and Jeff's eyes, they're gobsmacked that the clumsy, scatterbrained, and "scaredy-cat" kid that Tony Stark adopted a while ago is Spider-Man. (Technically, none of this is a lie. Because Peter is a terrible liar unless it's For the Jokes, and often comes across this way even if he hadn't meant to.) They're wondering how he pulled that off since he's the same age as Spider-Man, who is known to be an Avenger, and associates in the same circles as Peter. It helps that Peter and Spider-Man have been in a social media war, and that Peter works at the Daily Bugle that is known for disliking Spider-Man. Peter's been taking lessons for years atp to keep his identity safe. Which is also bonus points to Peter, because the two can tell that secret identities mean everything to him, but he told them who he was in a heartbeat (literally the very first thing he did when he found Miles).

In other words: Peter was ecstatic to become a teacher for his own matching superhero kid and it's one of the most important bonds in his life. That's his baby brother now!!

[inkskinned]

no, but really, we need to talk about the casual objectification that has become the fallback discourse of the internet: if you're pretty and dressed nicely, you're a slut. and if you're even vaguely outside of their body standard, you're fucking disgusting.

too-frequently, people position sex workers as being "the problem". they sneer you're addicted to pornography, you don't know what a real woman looks like. but real women are in pornography. the real bodies on display are not the issue here: the issue is that other people feel extremely confident when commenting on someone's physique.

2000's super-thin is slowly worming its way back into the public ideal. recently i saw someone get told to "go for a run", despite the fact she was on the thinner side of average. not that it would ever be appropriate to say that: but it's kind of like sticker shock when you see it. people think that is fat? holy shit. do they just have no idea about things?

but what are you going to do about it? that's the problem, right. because chances are - you're a normal person. we can say normalize carrying fat on your body, but we are not the billion-dollar diet industry. we are not the billion-dollar fashion industry. we are just, like. people. who are trying to make content on the internet, without being treated shittily.

as someone who has been on both sides of things: you are treated better when you are thin and pretty. this is statistically correct. i am not saying that you cannot be bullied for being thin; i'm saying there are objective institutional biases against certain bodytypes. there are videos of men and women who lost weight all saying: i now know for a fact exactly how much worse you're treated. in the comments, some asshole inevitably says something akin to you deserved to be dehumanized when you were fat.

which means that ... the easiest thing to do is be pretty and thin. it is the path of least resistance, because of course it is, because any time you post a picture of yourself without a thigh gap, someone immediately comments something like you need to try a diet.

the other half is also dehumanizing though, huh, just in a different way. when i put on makeup and nice clothes, i am told i slept my way to the top as a professional. do you know how many women in STEM have told me they purposefully dress to "unimpress" because they already struggle to be taken seriously and if they're ever considered pretty - it for some reason takes away from their authority.

so they make it seem like it's your fault. you, existing in a body - it's your fault! if you didn't want shitty comments, don't have a body. they position us against each other like chess pieces; vying for male attention we don't even need.

and i can be an authority on this unless you think i'm fat and unattractive. when i am pretty and thin, i'm an activist. when i am just a normal person who makes a good point: i am immediately dismissed. nobody fucking believes you if you're not seen as attractive. you literally lose value. you cease to exist.

but the whole time, it feels like - is anyone actually grounded the fuck in reality? the line of "pretty and thin" keeps shifting. nobody seems to understand what "a normal weight" even looks like, because it's not something that exists - you cannot tell a person's health by looking at their body. even if you think you could tell that, even if you're sure a person is dangerously overweight - people are not your dolls. they do not need to be dressed up or displayed properly to soothe your aesthetics. you aren't concerned for them, you're stealing their agency. you don't get to say if they're "allowed" to take pictures and post them on the internet - you don't get to tell them how to exist.

people hide behind "the obesity epidemic" without any actual qualifications. they crow things about "normalizing unhealthiness".

but it's bullshit. i have visible abs. there is a pair of parallel lines on my body, even when i'm relaxed; where my obliques meet my abdominal wall. i am proud of this because it means i'm strong, because i overcame an eating disorder only to be ripped as fuck. it is genetic and physical luck that i even get any definition, i'm pleased as punch.

but it does mean that my abdominal wall sticks out a little bit. the other day i posted a video of myself dancing, and, for a moment, my shirt slipped. you could see a little bit of my stomach. i was cartwheeling to the floor. moments before this, i'd had my foot over my head.

a guy slid into my DMs. a row of vomiting emojis prefaced: you should really lose some weight before you think about dancing.

i stared at it for a long time. there was a time when i would have been triggered by this, where it would have encouraged me to starve myself. i would have ignored the fact i'm flexible, agile, good at jumping: i would have lost the weight for a stranger's passing comment. i would have found myself and my body fucking disgusting.

and for what? to please what? because why? so that he can exist in this world without an unchallenged eyeball? what would my self-hatred even accomplish? usually i write paragraphs. obviously. on this particular occasion, in this body i've been at war with for ages: i just felt exhausted.

it shouldn't be even worth saying. it shouldn't be hard to explain. all of this emotional turmoil when he cannot even comprehend the most basic truth: i am not an object on display for him.

[casscainmainly]

I love that Shiva meets Duke and decides that she has another kid now

Genuinely the Shiva-Duke interactions were so good in Outsiders I desperately need more of them. It's funny because she gets invested in him after the panel below, like look at her face:

She's like 'wow this kid is hilarious I'm going to adopt him now'. On a more serious note, I love that she is the alternative to Batman throughout the series, but she's not automatically the worse option just because she's a) not Batman and b) a woman of colour. She represents choice and agency, a choice and agency Bruce cannot give because of his White perspective:

And Duke sides with her immediately (the below panel is actually before Shiva makes her offer):

This is lowkey peak Duke characterisation because he's the person who calls Batman out, who doesn't have a personal stake in Bruce being right. His sense of justice has never been imparted through the Bat symbol, which honestly should mean very little to him. Shiva recognises this. Bruce offers him safety - Shiva offers action. Because she knows, without hesitation, that Duke Thomas will always choose action.

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[uncanny-tranny]

To terminally-ill disabled people: you aren't going to be forgotten. You deserve a space here in this world no matter how long you'll be here. You deserve every chance to be happy, to be welcomed, to be understood, to be accommodated, and to be taken care of to the fullest extent. You haven't "given up," you are so incredibly important, and it takes so much to be in your shoes. I hope you can find pride in who you are. Your existence is meaningful.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Arendelle

[sysig]

Hi, sorry to be anon, but can I ask to see the Vargas family post trick or treating? Divying the goods, or just being tired from the event? Thank you and Happy Halloween!

Day 30 - Fine, but you're taking nightmare duty

[pondslime]

What do you want from me? What have I done? I'm just a word processor, for Christ sake!

Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett AFTER HOURS (1985) dir. Martin Scorsese

[dragonzzilla]

The whole "A male is only born to the Gerudo once in a hundred years" presents a fascinating psychological crucible

By accident of birth, you're othered from the rest of your people. There is literally no one else like you. No one alive at least. You are born in the shape and in the shadow of long dead monarchs, Great Men.

But what does it mean to be a man in a society that is otherwise comprised entirely of women (I do not believe in gender essentialism; but I do believe in societal pressures). You are a boy and are constantly reminded of it. A boy without a father, without brothers; and when you become a man, you will never have sons of your own or even nephews. You're a single drop of masculinity in a ocean of mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, nieces; awash in femininity but forever separate from it. You are a man and that makes you king.

Before you're out of swaddling, you're placed on a pedestal. Elevated, in some regards. Afforded the greatest privileges available to your people. But they're not quite your people. However thinly it is presented, there's always going to be a degree of separation from everyone you know and care about. Your otherness is constantly reinforced, celebrated even. You're going to be a king. And you don't get a choice in the matter. You must stand alone, forever.

There are other men in the world, but they are not Gerudo. There are Gerudo, but none of them are men. The only people who could understand your struggle exist only as imperious statues and aspirational legends. They are Gerudo men, just like you, but they're not people anymore. They are kings, conquerors, shapers of history, children of destiny, great men. You are a man and that means you are destined for greatness.

Try not to crack under the pressure.

[crookedfivefingers]

3.13 | ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏʀᴅꜱ

link to the post I accidentally wound up prattling endlessly about in the tags 💀

[maxwell-grant]

im researching Scarecrow hench-people and the DC wiki is really unhelpful, can you give me a list of a few notable ones. Also who's this Autumn from the Audio Adventures people keep mentioning. Is she a canon character or is she an OC

thank you! also loved the list you did of your favorite hench people

Thank you! Now that you mention it, it does seem like Scarecrow's kinda lacking in terms of notable henchmen, even purely in terms of visually distinct one-offs. It might have something to do with how little he's been traditionally focused on crime and coalition building, per se, and more so on lone terrorist campaigns and experimentation. Besides Scream Queen, who I already went into in the other post, these are the ones that I can think of:

Autumn / Miss Autumn is canon to TBAA, she just never showed up in the show. We hear about her in S1 via two scenes where Miss Tuesday talks about her friend in Scarecrow's gang, another villain assistant named Autumn that she always texts with and coordinates with, and then later she'd appear in issue #6 of the Audio Adventures comic, kidnapping Dick while he's disguised as a Burma Shave Boy and bringing him over to the Scarecrow as part of his plan. She claims to be a scullery maid in charge of the "kitchen" and is instructed by Crane to prepare a new batch, and Dick finds an Arkham Asylum physician's clearence and security badge that might belong to her, given Miss Tuesday in the show claims to have grown up in Arkham and the two seeming to be fairly close friends.

The Audio Adventures Special prequel comic released along with S2 also showed that, along with his biker gang to peddle in the street, he employs dealers hidden in plain sight such as the elderly librarian Mrs.Elliot, who we don't get to know much more about other than her being known by Dick and his friends, and a willing enthusiastic participant in the Scarecrow's plans to sell drugs to kids, as well as kidnap and experiment on them.

In terms of notable henchmen I think the first one he ever got were the Strawmen from Batman #296: said to be named Otto and Raymond, former students of his who've joined him and became students of the Scarecrow, serving as the muscle to his operation.

There's Linda Frittawa / Fright, introduced in a Judd Winick arc by the name of "As the Crow Flies", who became his assistant and confidant, while secretly manipulating him under a deal she made with the Penguin. She's the one who turned Scarecrow into the Scarebeast, and eventually showed up later working for Jeremiah Arkham Black Mask.

Not quite a henchwoman per se but there is a character named Haunter who showed up in the 2017 Batman (vol.3) annual, who's able to kill people with her DNA and who coordinates a small-scale fear gas with Jonathan to make her escape from Arkham, and it's said the two had a "twisted mutual admiration thing" before Batman put her away. She's only made two appearences in total, in two anthology shorts penned by her creator Scott Bryan Wilson, and I'm including her because given her name and gimmick and lack of prominence, she might as well be a Scarecrow henchwoman or partner or extension of his deal.

There's a fairly long pattern of Scarecrow being responsible for the creation of new villains with his experiments even if they don't necessarily go on to become henchmen - Madame Crow from Tynion's run was a former student who was tortured with fear toxin for months and took over a year to recover, before embarking on her own fear toxin campaigns. Colin Wilkes from Streets of Gotham was an abused orphan kidnapped by Scarecrow and given Venom injections before being ordered to attack Batman, and who was freed and became a hero. The Gotham Knight movie states that this version of Killer Croc was experimented on by Jonathan Crane, who caused his condition to worsen and seems to have kept him around a sewer hideout as an attack dog. The Titans show had him behind the resurrection of Jason Todd and his transformation into Red Hood, and Gotham had him create the show's version of Joker Toxin that kicks off Jeremiah Valeska's transformation.

And finally, we'd be remiss not to mention that a couple of times in his older appearences he's had a pet raven named Nightmare, a concept that's come up again in more recent kid-friendly books where it's named Croward instead, who assisted him in his criminal endeavors. I suppose that raven evidently doesn't make too much sense given Crane's backstory revolving around the crow trauma inflicted on him by his grandmother, or that trained birds are still very much Penguin territory in spite of him never using them anymore, or it clashing too much with the darker tone and vibe he's supposed to have, but there's a self-evident charm to the scarecrow-themed villain having a pet raven circling him.