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Kanirou

@kanirou-crosshack / kanirou-crosshack.tumblr.com

Kanirou | Bi/Ace | They/Them Age of Sail | Dinosaurs | Classical Antiquity | Tolkien | D&D | Clone Wars | Green Lantern | Westerns | Noir | has History degrees and is not afraid to misuse them | currently in Golden Age Hollywood hell

They are a absolute show off but that’s fine because they get a little boop to the nose.

Someone please ease my soul with a fanfic, a prompt, a short essay of Logan then NOT putting Kurt down, grinning and just walks him off like this to the jet, up the stairs and everything, Kurt laughing when Logan puts him in his chair, puts the seatbelt on and sits down himself and they are chuckling the whole time.

look sometimes we just gotta own that there are entire dimensions of romance straight people don’t understand, and it is my duty to help illuminate that truth

A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)

Disclaimer: Though I have been using a cane for 6 years, I am not a doctor, nor am I by any means an expert. This guide is true to my experience, but there are as many ways to use a cane as there are cane users!

This guide will not include: White canes for blindness, crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs as I have no personal experience with these.

This is meant to be a general guide to get you started and avoid some common mishaps/misconceptions, but you absolutely should continue to do your own research outside of this guide!

The biggest recurring problem I've seen is using the cane on the wrong side. The cane goes on the opposite side of the pain! If your character has even-sided pain or needs it for balance/weakness, then use the cane in the non-dominant hand to keep the dominant hand free. Some cane users also switch sides to give their arm a rest!

A cane takes about 20% of your weight off the opposite leg. It should fit within your natural gait and become something of an extension of your body. If you need more weight off than 20%, then crutches, a walker, or a wheelchair is needed.

Putting more pressure on the cane, using it on the wrong side, or having it at the wrong height will make it less effective, and can cause long term damage to your body from improper pressure and posture. (Hugh Laurie genuinely hurt his body from years of using a cane wrong on House!)

(an animated GIF of a cane matching the natural walking gait. It turns red when pressure is placed on it.)

When going up and down stairs, there is an ideal standard: You want to use the handrail and the cane at the same time, or prioritize the handrail if it's only on one side. When going up stairs you lead with your good leg and follow with the cane and hurt leg together. When going down stairs you lead with the cane, then the good leg, and THEN the leg that needs help.

Realistically though, many people don't move out of the way for cane users to access the railing, many stairs don't have railings, and many are wet, rusty, or generally not ideal to grip.

In these cases, if you have a friend nearby, holding on to them is a good idea. Or, take it one step at a time carefully if you're alone.

Now we come to a very common mistake I see... Using fashion canes for medical use!

(These are 4 broad shapes, but there is INCREDIBLE variation in cane handles. Research heavily what will be best for your character's specific needs!)

The handle is the contact point for all the weight you're putting on your cane, and that pressure is being put onto your hand, wrist, and shoulder. So the shape is very important for long term use!

Knob handles (and very decorative handles) are not used for medical use for this reason. It adds extra stress to the body and can damage your hand to put constant pressure onto these painful shapes.

The weight of a cane is also incredibly important, as a heavier cane will cause wear on your body much faster. When you're using it all day, it gets heavy fast! If your character struggles with weakness, then they won't want a heavy cane if they can help it!

This is also part of why sword canes aren't usually very viable for medical use (along with them usually being knob handles) is that swords are extra weight!

However, a small knife or perhaps a retractable blade hidden within the base might be viable even for weak characters.

Bases have a lot of variability as well, and the modern standard is generally adjustable bases. Adjustable canes are very handy if your character regularly changes shoe height, for instance (gotta keep the height at your hip!)

Canes help on most terrain with their standard base and structure. But for some terrain, you might want a different base, or to forego the cane entirely! This article covers it pretty well.

Many cane users decorate their canes! Stickers are incredibly common, and painting canes is relatively common as well! You'll also see people replacing the standard wrist strap with a personalized one, or even adding a small charm to the ring the strap connects to. (nothing too large, or it gets annoying as the cane is swinging around everywhere)

(my canes, for reference)

If your character uses a cane full time, then they might also have multiple canes that look different aesthetically to match their outfits!

When it comes to practical things outside of the cane, you reasonably only have one hand available while it's being used. Many people will hook their cane onto their arm or let it dangle on the strap (if they have one) while using their cane arm, but it's often significantly less convenient than 2 hands. But, if you need 2 hands, then it's either setting the cane down or letting it hang!

For this reason, optimizing one handed use is ideal! Keeping bags/items on the side of your free hand helps keep your items accessible.

When sitting, the cane either leans against a wall or table, goes under the chair, or hooks onto the back of the chair. (It often falls when hanging off of a chair, in my experience)

When getting up, the user will either use their cane to help them balance/support as they stand, or get up and then grab their cane. This depends on what it's being used for (balance vs pain when walking, for instance!)

That's everything I can think of for now. Thank you for reading my long-but-absolutely-not-comprehensive list of things to keep in mind when writing or drawing a cane user!

Happy disability pride month! Go forth and make more characters use canes!!!

"binge-worthy show" man fuck that

i want my shows one episode followed by a whole ass week of going a little insane over it with the people on my phone, writing fics theorizing and going over every single scene through amazing gifs and meta, before the next ep drops and the cicle begins anew

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speak louder

It's also contributing to the overall stagnation of writing. Binging isn't conducive to analysis.

Binging and whole season drops also seem to be a bit hard on fandoms and fan content creation.

Looking at eg. House of the Dragon last year, which spaced out 10 episodes over 10 weeks (that is 2 1/2 months) and the fandom content production and fandom discussions over multiple platforms were so high! It gave fans time to speculate, to produce and to wait for. It held the anticipation high and invigorated the fandom over a long time.

But Netflix (or other streaming services) when they drop a whole season in one go? I feel yes, many fans will watch it. But the vibe is very different. And there will be discussions and fan content, but I feel it is not necessarily good for a fandom in the long run. The built-up does not carry these fandoms as long for "casual" fans and will not bring the same influx of new fans and new content to those fandoms. And that is sad for fan spaces in my opinion.

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It's not just fandom. When I teach popular culture, I also mention how binge culture is destroying the social function of shows.

In the traditional broadcasting structure, you have an episode a week at a set time - you sit down and you watch it, maybe make a family thing out of it. The next day you go to work, and your coworkers have seen the episode too, and you talk about it - because a tv show is a safe topic (not political, not too personal), so you have something to bond over/socialize.

But when a whole season drops at the same time... You either force yourself to binge it, turning your schedule upside down, or you watch it in bits, risking to fall behind. Say a popular show drops a season on a Saturday. On Monday at work, there will be people who haven't started it, people who are half-through, people who have finieshed it... Mix with the fear-of-spoilers culture, suddenly this point of bonding becomes restricted, even eradicated.

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It’s also destroying show production. These days if a season isn’t binged in the first week — fully, completed, watched all the way through in THE FIRST WEEK — it doesn’t get renewed. There’s no opportunity for shows to grow legs and catch on. Netflix would’ve canceled The X-Files. Netflix would’ve canceled so many classic shows that were allowed to find their audience gradually.

King

Worth noting that he protested loudly against the WWE doing a show in Saudi Arabia after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, and the company retaliated by making sure he hasn’t been on TV or PPV since. Not fired, of course, so they can keep selling merchandise with his face on it (and keep him from joining the competition), just out of the public eye so he and his protests gets forgotten by the fans.

Picture that: an ubiquitous celeb and household name like John Cena basically got black bagged and vanished for speaking up for human rights. That’s the power of capitalism, kids

Source: mic.com

King

Worth noting that he protested loudly against the WWE doing a show in Saudi Arabia after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, and the company retaliated by making sure he hasn’t been on TV or PPV since. Not fired, of course, so they can keep selling merchandise with his face on it (and keep him from joining the competition), just out of the public eye so he and his protests gets forgotten by the fans.

Picture that: an ubiquitous celeb and household name like John Cena basically got black bagged and vanished for speaking up for human rights. That’s the power of capitalism, kids

Source: mic.com
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Spirit: Stallion of The Cimarron & the Indian Boarding Schools/Residential Schools allegory

Holy shit!

Was this intentional?

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Considering the rest of the film’s heavy anti-colonization messaging, the main antagonist being heavily modeled on & inspired by General Custer, the other main (human) protagonist being a Native man (& the fort is where Spirit meets Little Creek), yes, most likely

YES. It was 100% intentional. I highly recommend reading up on the making of this film. There was an incredible amount of care that went into the development.

They had Lakota consultants for the project, especially regarding the use of the Lakota language in the film (which is used sparsely, but when used is accurate).

It’s par for the course now to consult people belonging to a culture for projects representing it these days (i.e. Moana, Frozen 2, etc.) but it certainly wasn’t when Spirit came out in 2002.

This film is allegorical to its core.

i want people to appreciate pigeons. not "ehehe skrunkly little trash gremlins. so adaptable and resilient". nothing wrong with that sentiment towards racccons and opossums, but when people do this about pigeons, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding about a pigeon's place in the world.

pigeons were beloved. they were pets, they were tools, they were food. we found use and pleasure in everything about them. then they became obsolete. then they stopped being popular. an animal that we have literally thousands of years of deep history with, completely discarded by mankind to the point most people are ignorant of their existence outside of "rats with wings".