#we can take care of each others

[thesocialgremlin]

If I were in charge, first order of business is to taxe the super rich for a universal basic income.

Next, we're tying politicians wages to the average income of their riding. You can't represent people if you think yourself above people.

With that, we tie minimum wage to inflation and use it as a baseline to cap rent, utilities, insurances. Create a public record so nobody can rip you off.

End price gouging entirely. Enforce the retail/wholesale markup and investigate companies with suspicious profits. Tax businesses higher based on the CEO/Baseline staff pay gap - less than 30% are eligible for government grants, everything above gets taxed heavier with the highest gap.

No more super rich. Nobody needs that much money. Those people need to start investing in their companies and their people instead of making millions a day on the back of their workers.

Housing programs. Land allotments. You turn 25 years old, congratulations, here's a house and a plot of land. Do with it as you may, but you may not be allotted another plot for another 25 years if you squander it. Why's that?

You turn 50? Welcome to your retirement package? You want travel? You want crafts? You want a cottage in the woods? Ask and you get; you served your time, we've got you. Rest, enjoy the rest of your life. Spend your years doing what brings you peace. As long as you're not hurting anyone who doesn't want to be hurt, you good, boo.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

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[napping-sapphic]

PLEASE make a blanket and pillow bed on the floor with me PLEASE get distracted midway through and start a pillow fight PLEASE lay down on it and watch movies on our laptop and cuddle with me PLEASE kiss me goodnight and sleep with me there PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE—

[milkweedman]

Knitting a freehand bag and started wondering how often people even use patterns, anyway. So--how often do you use a pattern when you make things ? This include knitting/crochet/sewing/weaving/nalbinding/bobbin lace/tatting/etc but also things like woodworking, cooking, and baking. If you want to just pick the thing you do most often that's fine.

I personally do not use patterns as I find them far more confusing than just figuring out the construction of an item and simply making it. I do very occasionally browse ravelry for inspiration but have downloaded maybe 2. In the 5 or so years since I joined. And have followed exactly 1, which I modified every single aspect of. In my defense, dyslexia.

[dykedvonte]

Curly had two days to act and Swansea had two months.

I think it’s just interesting that every defense of Swansea not immediately acting are the same ones that are argued against for Curly. “He didn’t want to alert Daisuke or makes things worse for Anya either Jimmy!” I mean people also assume that about Curly and the crew. “He has to think about his plan of action and a right moment!” Again so did Curly, power and authority aside, he still would have to think of what he had to do. “He makes sure he doesn’t have to be around Jimmy!” So did Curly and they only do this to an extent, both give Jimmy more than a few opening to keep harassing Anya.

This isn’t defense of Curly nor a damnation of Swansea. Their actions are very parallel to each others in tragic and sour ways when it comes to how they approached helping Anya. In the grand scheme of it all they both did the same thing: Nothing. No action either took stopped the inevitable outcome of her death nor Jimmy’s continued damage to themself.

The only real difference is Swansea didn’t like Jimmy which is pretty substantial, but also just as damning as Curly knowing how bad Jimmy could get to an extent. He had even less of a reason to wait, even more of a reason to act seeing as he was now worried for Anya AND Daisuke. He is not bound by the possible procedure as Captain and actively does not care about what happens next. So what does it matter if he acted in the moment? Why did he wait? I think he’s just as morally complex and grey as Curly and we hold him on a pedestal that still perpetuates things in rape culture the game critiques.

It’s not just enough to dislike and be abrasive to predators/abusers like Jimmy. It’s not enough to just put yourself between them and the other person. It’s not enough to hold tensions when you know someone is vulnerable. He and Curly do the exact same things but on different sides of the coin. I ask how is it better to not turn a blind eye but still not really do anything about what you are seeing? Not until it affects you atleast…

The game makes a big point to not put men doing the bare minimum or who wait to do more on pedestals and I’m actually surprised so many are missing that point.

[kuromi-hoemie]

being like 5’2” - 5’4” is so attractive to me like omg ur head fits right under my chin and right in my tits ♡⁠ let me hold you. i love being a tall girl

[bixels]

What did/do you like about Pharah?

Uh, gameplay-wise, I really love characters in shooters who rely on three-dimensional movement techs. Chaining together hover and jump to stay in the air for as long as possible and keep momentum is so satisfying, and picking enemies off from the sky made me feel like a bird of prey. I was a good Pharah main.

Story-wise, there unfortunately isn't much to canonically go off because Pharah is so underutilized and neglected. Her personality's pretty boilerplate "heroic hero" (she's literally inspired by Captain America).

But it's the crumbs/bits and pieces that I really latched onto. Pharah's a confirmed lesbian; her short story with Baptiste implies she harbors a crush on Mercy (fucking thank you.). She's biracial Egyptian/First Nations. She has major mommy issues, having grown up both admiring and resenting Ana. She's the bridge between Old Overwatch, inspired by the idealized heroes who surrounded her childhood, and New Overwatch. She's one of the only inter-generational characters in the cast; someone whose experiences span the gap, which is why I seriously believe Pharah would make a great main character.

There isn't much to go off of, though; she's a very uncomplicated character (she's a soldier for a private military corporation, lol.). But that just means she's a blank slate character, so I've seen fanfic writers run wild and create some really interesting takes on her. My favorite interpretation of her's a dense, herbo gym-bro type (a lot of her liens are about work outs, exercising, and playing sports) who's easily excitable under her seemingly self-serious, armored visage. We see how she tends to gloat and hype herself up when she's on a streak too, so Pharah definitely has a competitive and boastful side under her more professional and militant performance.

Now Mercy? Mercy is a real complex character.

[sunnykeysmash]

[doublel27]

Sometimes your wildly angry and hateful response to a piece of media has nothing to do with the actual piece of media and has everything to do with your own triggers.

Let me explain: sometimes a piece of media uses a common human failing. Something that happens all the time. To explore humanity within the confines of the story, as stories often do.

Sometimes, for you, that small human failing is the crux of the pain and anger you carry inside. Sometimes even the smallest and least harmful version of it, to quote RWRB, tears all the way down through the floor and into the sub-basements. Beyond where anyone would think that small human failing might go.

Because for you, it’s not what’s happening on screen but the painful things that have happened to you and you haven’t dealt with. You’ve locked them in a box or you’ve festered in them. Made it part of your personality to be against anyone or anything that carries this common human failing. Because the person that hurt you is, in your mind, a monster. You’ve divorced this action from humanity and you’ve made it that it’s only a thing that bad people or monsters do.

And the way the characters are treating this common human failing that happens every day is not how you want to handle it. Or is perhaps how you handled it and you wished you didn’t. And it makes you so incandescently angry.

When that happens, my loves, I want you to sit with it and ask yourself why you’re so incandescently angry or sad. Feel your feelings. Examine what it means when a character you love does something you equate with being monstrous. Or even more dangerous, when a character you love forgives something that you deem monstrous. Or if the failings of the characters remind you of yourself in some way. What is hiding underneath the anger and sadness? Is it shame? Is is loneliness? Is it worthlessness? Is it invalidation?

Because this is why the character who is genocidal mass murderer/serial killer is your poor little meow meow and the character with the every day failings is the worst character ever to exist. Because we look for the humanity in monsters, especially when we feel monstrous. But when a character is framed as human and shows a failing, we demonize them, because they remind us of our monsters who were also human. And I want you to think about it. Sometimes.

You have the choice at any time to stop engaging with a piece of media because it’s too painful or too raw or you’re not ready. But that doesn’t make that piece of media bad or evil (mostly there are some exceptions for the writings by the worst of humanity).

Take care of yourself. Please. 💜💜

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[homoeroticgrappling]

In light of recent events it can be hard to be creative, so here's a dumb doodle I did to force myself into doing something

Transparent so y'all can have zombie Darby on your dash/wherever you want to put him

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

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[villain-song]

i love you people

i love you world

we are afraid

but we must not be complacent

love each other

fight for one another

never ever give up

we will survive

we will live

keep imagining a better future

hold it in your hearts

one day there will be no fascism, no white supremacy, no patriarchy, no empire, no dispossession, no capitalism, no oppression, no racism, no cishetamatonormativity, no ableism, no unfree labor, no prisons, no billionaires, no destruction, no regimes of death

let's fight for a better world so that one day there will be clean air, clean water, clean lands, housing for all, healthcare for all, food for all, love instead of hate, unity, solidarity, caring communities, abolition, liberating education, the ability to do what we love, queer liberation, black liberation, liberation for all peoples, sunshine on our faces, life instead of survival, and so much more

loving and hope are happiness.

[hobermallowed]

Interesting the way craving a canon mlm ship brings out the misogyny in so many people.

[lilyoffandoms]

I’m hopeful.

Yeah, it’s sucks.

But I’m hopeful.

Why?

Because my partner, who voted the same as me, greeted me with a pot of fresh coffee and a hug this morning.

Because my neighbor, who voted the opposite of me, greeted me this morning with a smile as she always does.

Because the person next to me on the morning commute, who voted who knows which way, asked how I was doing after the elections.

Because the bus driver, who didn’t vote, wished me a good day and a better week as I got off at my stop.

We are not our country’s political elite. We are family, friends, neighbors, and strangers who all share a common goal, we want to live our life as best we can.

We are a community no matter what side of the aisle you take. We are a community no matter which candidates are put forward or which win. No matter electoral college or popular vote. Conservative or liberal. Capitalist or socialist. Red or blue.

No matter what, we are a community, and it is through those bonds that we will move forward.

There is hope in community bonds. There is hope in your family, friends, neighbors, and strangers.

There is hope.

Remember that.

[dittolicous]

"anti-zosans just dont get it! the appeal IS that they hate each other!"

me, a zosan shipper: