#this was a rare venting post

[lais-a-ramos]

i usually don't talk about personal stuff, but, since i'm still waiting for the public university that i get my free therapy from to clarify whether the program continues or not, this is a rare venting post ig...

well, earlier today i attended the funeral of one of my paternal aunts.

she died yesterday, and we got the news late at night.

as it's common for many working class Brazilian families, there are, like, 4 houses in the same terrain that belonged to my late grandpa, so, we all sort of lived together, and it was a huge shock for all of us.

other relatives, who live in the same town as us, also appeared to show support.

i overheard a cousin of mine (who is younger than me and recently lost her own mom to breast cancer, which just shows how strong she is to come back to the place she grew up to support the remaining aunts, one of which is her grandma) saying this aunt died of pulmonary embolism, after she was diagnosed with pneumonia last week.

my dad also said something earlier this week about lung damage, if i remember correctly.

me and my big sis, we suspect that this aunt either got covid or was suffering from the consequences of long covid, since she was looking weaker and more fragile in the past 2,3 years or so.

but, since the health unit she was admitted has a pretty basic infrastructure, as it's common for small towns here, we might never know for sure, bc we don't even know if it occurred to the doctors to get her tested...

i wasn't particularly atached to her, but it's still very painful, bc, with the terrain thing i said above, i still grew up with her and she was a psrt of my childhood...

but, most of all, it's particularly painful bc of the son she left.

he has down syndrome, but, as it's also common for the lives of working class ppl here in Brazil and i assume South America in general, he never had access to the type of multidisciplinary healthcare support that he needed and is a person with high support needs, which means he depended on his mother for almost everything.

in the days she was still at the health unit -- which can't be called a hospital, bc it's this type of unit we call here "unidade de pronto atendimento" and serves to provide medium complexity healthcare -- he frequently asked to my other aunts and relatives when his mom would come back.

he is not completely abandoned, since my other aunts, who helped said aunt to take care of him, are still alive and will take care of him, which is a relief ofc...

but they are also elderly women, and way older than his late mother.

and, most of all, it's been devastating way beyond words to hear the poor guy crying and having panick attacks as these aunts and my other relatives tried explaining to explain to him that his mom won't come back to go to church with him ever...

bc, really, there are no words to describe how terrible it all is...

it's also a pretty average working class Brazilian experience, as you guys can see by the stuff i mentioned above...

and, i don't even know what's the takeaway from this story i'm telling...

i guess it's just to give an insight of what life here in this country can be, you know, besides all the venting and stuff...

(and, YES, i know that other countries on the Global South still got it worse.

in fact, even here in Latin America.

it's just that it's still fucking terrible that we have to endure this type of stuff every day bc of economic inequality and other social issues)

maybe it's just a reminder that life and death are way bigger than all of us idk...

just a reminder of one of those "remember you are mortal" moments that life throws at us sometimes...

yeah, sounds about right.

[fussystreetlight]

Antis, I think y'all need to understand some things:

Emotions = / = legality or morality

A crime is not a crime because it's "icky".

A crime is a crime because someone in some way got hurt. This is why something like thievery is illegal. This is why murder is illegal. This is the real reason why rape is illegal.

These crimes caused real people real emotional and physical distress.

A drawing/cartoon/written work can make someone sad or angry or squicked out, but that is NOT the same thing as being traumatized. Reading a bad book is not something that will affect your psyche for years to come and will possibly need therapy for. A real person is not being harmed, especially not the viewer/reader. You're not a victim, you're not standing up for victims, stop acting like it.

Also, sometimes: legality = / = morality and vice versa

It used to be legal to own slaves. It used to legal to treat black people like they weren't human. It used to be illegal for women to vote. It used to be illegal to be gay, and it still is in some places. It used to be legal to force people with disorders like anxiety and ADHD to go to horrible mental asylums where they were treated like animals. Today, in some places in America, abortion is illegal.

One more thing.

The way they got support for these things? The way they got the power and permission to do these things? The way they got people like you to let them do these things?

They claimed the people they wanted to attack weren't normal. That they weren't like you or me or the one saying this who is totally on your side, they definitely won't go after you the moment you do something they don't like or think you're a threat to them or you certainly weren't their next target anyway.

So when you say people aren't normal, that you only like normal things and those other things you don't like aren't normal so of course you're against them... You are repeating the parts of history that it's warning against.

[superemeralds]

get submerged, loser

[beanghostprincess]

I'm not the biggest Zosan but you know when they make Zoro hold Sanji's face just like, forcefully enough to ground him to earth and help him let go of the burden he carries for a while by making it his instead? Yeah. That. That gets me every time.

[hansama]

"i feel so helpless"

[irlplasticlamb]

going through it* rn i’m afraid

* looking for a flat that is at least somewhat affordable to be able to live somewhere that is not my tiny village because i’m feeling very isolated and also being single is kicking my ass and also i’m hating my art and everything about myself at the moment xoxo

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

feeling very grateful for the cute barista today who clearly clocked a) my fontaines d.c. tote, and b) the fact i was stuck on a spectacularly bad date, and proceeded to play me an entire playlist of fontaines d.c. and sneak me extra vegan marshmallows with my hot chocolate

[sharksandjays]

anyone else have a family (including extended) that is entirely christian conservative so every family visit you have is hell because youre the Only Liberal so everyone picks fights against you and nobody fights for you except yourself?

[seventh-district]

LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOO

[glitter-stained]

Some of the posts I see here y'all gotta stop seeing fanfics as "bad dc takes". Like, it's perfectly fine to not like a trope that's popular in fanfic, but you gotta stop seeing it as character meta is what I'm saying. Fanfic writers are not canon writers, they do not owe you canon compliant, and you don't get to assume that what they're writing comes from a place of ignorance when there are so many reasons to include/not include something in your fic.

Like, allow me to use my own fics as example since they're the only one I have background info on the knowledge and motivations of the author:

-I wrote a fic with Lazarus Rage in it once. Do I know it's not canon? Absolutely. Do I think it's necessary for the understanding of Jason's character? Not at all, I think canon Jason is more interesting without the pit rage. I just wanted to write it once because it looked cathartic and you know what? It was. It was super cathartic. I wanted to write a story about the progression of a depressive episodes and using pit rage to talk about the feeling of loss of control with intense anger issues and sensation of loss and deep self-hatred afterwards, and i thought writing this is gonna feel good and it felt good, for me and for the readers.

-I'm also currently finishing another fic, in which I've simplified Tim's relationship with Jason's a lot (basically Tim is still haunted by Jason's ghost and Dick is still his favourite Robin but the victim blaming is much less intense and there's an intense, genuine admiration for Jason and happiness to get him back). Is it because I hate canon and its complexity? No, I love it, I love when character relationships are fucked up and they make a mess. I'd love to explore that in a different fic, even have the prompt already. But I'm writing a really intense fic about trauma, taboo and lack of communication around sexual abuse, and there are so many characters pov and things happening and I have to do this right because we're talking about things that happen to real people and not being accidentally insensitive or sending a shit message is more important to me than perfect canon compliance, and it's just not the place for it. This story isn't about tim, and it's not about victim-blaming. It's a fascinating can of worms to open, but I'm not gonna open it if I don't have the space to deal with it because I'm not gonna let worms roam freely all over my fanfic when I can choose not to include the worms in my story, because it might rely on base material but it's still a finite story that exists within its own scope because I'm not a comics writer, I'm a fanfic writer and my story doesn't exist as a pure extension of the comics and I don't owe you canon compliance. And how boring would that be if we could only write canon compliant stuff! No more coffee shop aus, no powers aus, fantasy aus, no more non canon ships between characters that hated eachother until the day they died (but had so much sexual tension)... Fanfic is not one single entity that takes place in a simplified version of the canon universe complete with consistent lukewarm tropes and watered down understanding of characters. Fanfics are rich and diverse and yeah canon compliant is great and i want more of it but the universe is so much wider and that's what makes it rich! Do some people write fanfic and also don't interact with or know canon? Sure, plenty of them. Does that fanfic reflect their opinion of canon? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. You don't know that. In the meantime, people are still creating extra content and enriching the fandom experience and if you don't like it, genuinely, the filter tags button is right there. That's not to say there are no racist or classist or sexist tropes in fanfics, but again that exists within the scope of that story. Bad writing exists in canon, and it exists in fanfics, and sometimes a story is canon compliant with a terrible message and sometimes a story is canon divergent with a terrible message and pushing away everyone who writes things that aren't canon compliant is not going to fix these issues in the dc fandom. Telling people to "not write the character at all if you're going to write them ooc" assumes your understanding of what is essential to the character is perfect and The Right Way to interact with a fandom and it's patronising and not only do you take the risk of looking like a moron the second you make a mistake, it is actual gatekeeping and the reason many people find getting into comics/fandom intimidating in the first place. (And it also shits on the potential of AUs like dark reflections, mafia etc. Of course Mafia Bruce who kills people is deeply ooc. These stories are still fun and it's not wrong to write them!)

"This story really should have addressed that thing that happens in canon" did it happen in the setting of the fic? No? Then shut up and let the fic tell its own story, it doesn't have to "address" anything it doesn't have space for. Again, don't like don't read is a thing. Fanfic enriches the fandom, it doesn't take away from it, but you know what can? Canon writing. I'm way more concerned with what dc is having batman represent nowadays than with fanfic I haven't read because I knew I wouldn't like it.

TLDR: It's understandable to be upset when people who don't interact with canon material at all try to assert their opinion on canon as the truth, especially if they call any attempt at disagreeing with the mischaracterization gatekeeping, but that doesn't make you immune to being a gatekeeper. Assuming you know a writer's knowledge and opinions on a character because of that one fic of them is naive and a misunderstanding of what fanfic is. Fanfic writers are still real people who give you cool stuff for free and you don't have to like it but you still have to be respectful about it, and all that negative energy you spend on rants about "bad character and" you've read in fanfics would be so much better spent on bad canon writing because these people do have the power to fuck your favourite character over and they do owe you canon compliance, and with the amount of effort some fanfic writers put into their fics compared to some of the writers who get payed to write canon, you guys could stand to be more respectful about fanfics.

[malewife-overlord]

Fwumps into bed. On god I have had such a rough day.

So if you haven’t noticed, and chances are you didn’t, six cycles later has been deleted from my blog. I had a breakdown and got rid of all of it. I don’t really feel like posting it all back again because let’s be real it’s kinda embarrassing. I also don’t know if I’m going to keep continuing it. As I said, extremely rough morning.

Thanks to everyone who supported me. If you really really want it back uh idk reply to this post I guess. Or respond to the poll

[dukeofthomas]

I'm ngl I forgot I'm not an only child and was extremely confused on why I had such specific opinions on Jason's and Dick's brotherly relationship. Like I am a younger sibling ofc I'll have opinions on the brothers. Stop forgetting my older sibling exists challenge [level impossible]

[multi-lefaiye]

got called a "very pretty lady" and a "classy lady" earlier by this guy who came up to me and i am not holding it against him because he was a stranger and i'm not gonna let myself dwell on that 30 second interaction, but man i am still in a bad mood about it i will be honest

[galaxywhump]

Not to start anything but if people stop writing what they like it doesn't mean they'll start writing what you like.

[fourbirdsinahoodie]

hollow

It’s the close, the near

The not quite close enough

It’s old water on a dry day,

Barely enough to drive thirst away

It’s the peek of sun on a cloudy day,

But the rain is still here

It’s the warmth of a heater,

For frostbitten hands

It’s cold running water,

For a broken limb

It’s a scrap of meat,

For dogs under the table

It’s a dying reef,

To a fish

It’s a text,

“Can we talk?”

In the middle of the night, 

And you’re filled with dread

And you’re already wanting,

For something that never existed to stay

But that half feeling,

It’s finally gone

And you can finally feel whole.

Wholly grieving, hollow.

vent-ish poem for @soupygremlin. not too sure about it to be completely honest.

[simorys]

How life feels when I don't feel like I'm expected to draw something