holy fuck
this is the only cool place that has ever existed in the history of humankind
nothing else has ever mattered
Anonymous asked:
is jake gyllenhaal gay??
why would you ask us, a narnia blog, this
happy pride month to this post specifically
outsiders and boring normal people and fandom newbies always think that buckwild kinky porn fanfiction is the strangest fandom hobby but they are wrong.
the strangest fandom hobby is plotty fanfiction, the kind that requires research, because engaging in this hobby makes no goddamned sense.
it doesn’t even give anybody masturbation material, which is at least a logical and admirable goal that contributes to the betterment of society, or at least society’s solitary orgasms.
in other news i hope the cia spyware monitoring my internet usage understands that i’m googling information about smuggling drugs in thailand because i want the details to be right in a single paragraph in a 10,000 word story about a gay mafia guys.
this post has been making the rounds again and i just want to state for the record that it is a fucking delight to read in the tags all the random things people research for their fanfic and art. fandom, i love you. i love you with your flood maps and medical procedures and tentacle biology and historical fashion and traditional handcrafts and conlangs and urban geography and literally everything else. i am completely sincere about this. the enthusiasm with which people embrace detailed, deep, and often obscure research, just because they want to get it right, because they want to create something rich and interesting, it makes me feel better about the world. i adore it.
My Brain, for no goddamn reason: You know what would be funny? Me, up too early to drop my car off for maintainence: what? Brain: What if Wookiees and Kaminoans shared a recent common ancestor? Me: ... Me: *rapid mental theoretical xenobiology montage* Me: LOL. LMAO.
Some of us biologists would like an artist’s interpretation please.
How fortunate :)
My degree is in Scientific Illustration :)
Now I'm currently high off my tits on allergy medicine and Star Wars has only a passing relationship with Scientific Rigor, but let's have a little fun with HIGHLY SPECULATIVE EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE!!
Anyway, for those of you that aren't neck deep into the world's most deranged Space Opera, these are Wookiees and Kaminoans:
Wookiees are about 6-7 ft tall on average, Kaminoans about 7-9 ft.
Wookiees are from the Planet Kashyyk, which, in the style of single-biome planets in Star Wars, a temperate rain forest, not unlike the north pacific coast of the US and Canada, (and are also the ancestors of Ewoks according to this article I just read). Kaminoans are from an entirely flooded ocean-world called Kamino, and have been genetically modifying themselves for ages. I genuinely cannot remember if it's one of SW's 20-odd canons or a really good fic I read, but IIRC: 1. Kamino used to have solid land before the Bougies flooded it for ethnic genocide reasons. 2. Wookiees are not native to Kashyyk either- their ancestors crash-landed or were abandoned on the planet over a million years ago.
So, perhaps neither species is Native to their respective homeworld, what would the theoretical ancestor look like? Let's start with some features of the descendant species! Some notable features I'm deriving from half-remembered canon and a GREAT exhibit on costuming I saw:
- Wookiees have tons of hair, but no undercoat. I'm basing this off the fact that Chewbacca's original costume was made from wigs, not animal fur, but it makes a sort of sense- Long hair would act as an insulator by keeping air close to the skin, and is oily enough to keep them from getting soaked in the rain, or waterlogged when they need to take to occasional swim to get from one tree-city to another.
- The designers took some significant inspiration from Baikil Seals when it came to the eyes, nose and texture of Kaminoans- they're officially bald, but the velvety texture suggests they might have fine fur like humans do. This makes a sort of sense if the Kaminoans modified themselves to fit their watery new world.
- Kaminoan males have a crest on the tops of their heads- while they may have added something later, but bauplan genes, esp hair patterns are hard to fuck with, so the genetic potential for a crest was probably present in the Wookiee-Kaminoan Common Ancestor (or WKCA). Similarly, the Wookiee costumes I saw had notably longer fur along the neck and spine than the rest of the body. This suggests that the WKCA had a mane like a horse or zebra.
- Dark Sclera and lighter-colored Irises, and Vision in the UV and infrared spectra. Apparently, the stark-white walls of Tipoca city on Kamino are covered in UV-spectrum murals!
- A much broader ranger of hearing than humans. The uulating sound of a wookiee is well-known, and in one of the books, Kaminoan native language is described as high-pitched humming and trilling, which sounds like pitched-up Shryywook to me!
- Both species walk at a very long, smooth lope, despite being from Arboreal and Aquatic worlds respectively. Both Species are very capable of sprinting at great speed and have quite the jump, when needed.
- Both Species are Hypercarnivorous Apex predators that have a NASTY bite- Both species still retain prominent canine teeth.
So, the WKCA likely had:
- A lightly furred body with no undercoat
- A spinal mane, which is not a defensive feature, but a Heat-Dispersing one.
- Dark-pigmented eyes with light-colored irises and a broad range of vision- features commonly seen in animals that deal with highly variable levels of light, like something that hunts at dawn and dusk between bright sunlight and extreme darkness.
- Excellent hearing and a musical language that can be heard across great distances.
- Legs meant to walk very long distances and put on the occasional turn of speed, but not stalk.
- Was likely a social carnivore with BIG-ASS TEETH.
All these taken together suggest one thing: The Common Ancestor of Wookiees and Kaminoans evolved in a DESERT.
It's specifically a social sprinting predator- humans terminator-pursuit our prey down, leopards ambush, but the exceptionally long legs and short ankles (Those are short ankles on the Kaminoan compared to many terrestrial mammals) suggest a hybrid strategy more like that of African wild dogs- this is an animal that runs it's prey down with a lot of power, but it doesn't like to run for long, so it brought friends to corner the prey. We are looking at a very tall Mad Max Extra with the galaxy's Most Magnificent Mowhawk here.
LOL. LMAO.
You may note some Bonus features on the above Sketch- the larger ears and heavier legs- Wookiee ears and necks would have shrunk fairly fast to conserve body heat in such a wet environment, and the overall size decreased in order to be light enough to actually manage their new arboreal lifestyle. The Kaminoans were selecting for culturally desirable traits over all else, hence the lack of ears, dubious structural integrity in the neck and total absence of Ass. The WKCA is have been caked the fuck up on account of walking across huge amounts of desert, needs those big ears for thermal regulation and hearing each other and prey, and being purely terrestrial, probably outweighs both descendant species by a good amount.
I also gave it a Nubbin tail, because it's cute, and there's no evidence that Wookiees and Kaminoans DON'T have them.
Now I know I've been discussing carnivory, but mammals wander all over that spectrum of Omnivory all the time. Pandas are bears that are Vegan, Rodents love chicken.
So please consider, because it makes me laugh: The Common Ancestor is an Ungulate.
There have been Carnivorous ungulates before! Andrewsarchus comes to mind. I think they were social herbivores that developed a taste for meat as their planet dried out and these very large animals needed to get creative about calories and moisture in the encroaching desert ...Like if giraffes decided to start eating tourists.
Anyway, after doing some Lineart, giving her a BF (the Kaminoans made the crest a sex-indicative characteristic, which is HILARIOUS to the WKCA), omitting any gender-presenting nipples or sex organs to avoid the banhammer, Giving them toe-hooves like Eohippus and making them soft and velvety like a proper Desert Creachur:
Behold! The Common Ancestor of Wookiees and Kaminoans (and technically Ewoks too!). Truly, Speculative Evolutionary History is a fascinating subject...
...Except. It's a Big Galaxy. Much of it Unexplored.
The Common Ancestor might still be out there. Lurking. :)
I have thought of Wookies as a sentient tree sloth ever since the Timothy Zahn books, but this is really neat.
🏳️🌈 Ruth Ellis (1899 - 2000) was the daughter of former slaves. She came out as a lesbian when she was 16-years-old to the complete acceptance of her family. In 1937, Ruth and her longtime partner moved to Detroit from their hometown of Springfield, Illinois for the promise of higher wages. There, she became the first woman in Michigan to run her own printing business. She printed fliers, posters, and stationary in the front room of her home, which also quickly became a hotspot for Black LGBTQ social life. Before long, Ruth was helping those who came around in any way she could, including by paying for college tuitions. After the Stonewall uprising, 70-year-old Ruth began giving speeches in support of gay and lesbian rights all across the country. She remained an activist for the rest of her long life and even spent her 100th birthday leading the San Francisco Dyke March. At the time of her death at 101, she was recognized as the oldest out lesbian in the US. She is the subject of the documentary "Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100" and is the namesake of the Ruth Ellis Center, a shelter for homeless and at-risk LGBTQ youth in Detroit.
Celebrate Ruth Ellis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ellis_(activist)
#Pride #BlackLivesMatter
[Caption: picture of Ruth Ellis as an elderly black woman smiling at the camera. She has short white hair and is wearing a light pink jacket over a black shirt with a partially visible white drawing on the center.]
the fact the new series of hypothetical isn’t allowed to talk about the pandemic just in case people forget it happened is genuinely the funniest thing i’ve ever heard
Watch me scheduling this to be re-reblogged in two years for obvious reasons that I might forget in that time.
"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.
"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"
"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."
"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."
"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.
"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."
"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."
"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.
"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.
"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."
"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."
"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."
I feel that "lawn care" as promoted in the USA can be considered some kind of pseudoscience.
It doesn't have the conspiracy-theory-adjacent qualities of virtually every other "pseudoscience," which makes me hesitant to call it that, but the theory and method of it is still full of totally unsupported junk.
Where do I start?
- I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.
- Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.
- The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.
- Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.
- Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.
- Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.
- The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.
- Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.
- "Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.
- Let me make this very clear: It is fully impossible to "solve" the problem of plants popping up in your yard that aren't your one favored variety of grass. You will be buying herbicides for the rest of your life, and it will get worse, not better, because willy-nilly use of herbicides is leading to plants developing herbicide resistance faster than we can come up with new herbicides.
From my limited knowledge of ecology, "but this is what natives have been saying for YEARS" basically sums up literally all work that has been done with ecology in north america
You know, thinking about it, I imagine the Leverage crew are pretty philanthropic. Parker might have had to be introduced to the concept (”You just give them money and they go away with it? How does that work?”) but probably once she got her head around it she’d be into it.
What gets me is how god damned frustrating it would be to work somewhere that one of the Leverage crew supports. Nate would be okay, he’d just make small monthly gifts to ten million different organizations so that nobody thinks he’s worth very much (he doesn’t own his home and he gives such small amounts monthly that Development writes him off as an earnest but low-capacity donor who should get a thank-you card around the holidays). It’s probably a bigger inconvenience to him because he’s on every nonprofit mailing list known to man. He has so many address labels, guys. (I don’t want to be Nate but I am Nate. I have so many address labels.)
Sophie I imagine has an extravagant alias for every charity she supports; she gives outrageous amounts and in return demands only attention and adulation, tickets to all the galas, and to be in at least one photo in every annual report. We have a donor like this – she’s genuinely invested in our work, gives generously of her time and money, is never rude or demanding, but if she’s in the room all eyes must be on her at all times. I actually really like her but constant exposure could get…tiring.
Eliot just sends enormous, anonymous checks once a year through a shell company or DAF, which while not unusual would be irritating in that they can’t ever reach out to thank him and/or steward him into a larger gift appealing to his interests. They can’t even send him dumb swag! He deserves a charity-branded bottle opener and keychain flashlight! (He has stolen all of Nate’s, but they don’t know that.) Still, they’ve probably got a fun nickname for him; I have a few people in my research files who are simply named after characters from Greek mythology because that’s all the data I have or am allowed to store.
For a long time Hardison just dumped money into the bank accounts of his charities of choice, seamlessly, invisibly – it just APPEARED in the account, and he was cool with that until he checked back after a few years and found none of his money was being used because they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from and were worried it was a clerical error despite the bank assuring them otherwise. Now he still dumps money into the accounts but he entertains himself building an elaborate digital paper trail so that the accounting all works. Have you ever watched a Gift Processing office try to balance a nonprofit’s books? Sometimes they cry! Don’t be mean to them, Hardison.
Parker, bless her heart, just leaves bags of money on the doorsteps of random employees with notes directing how, in general terms, it should be spent. If she’s particularly pleased with the climbability of their home, she leaves a donut for them, too. Generally if she mentions she’s done this to the crew, Eliot calls up the charity to assure them that the large bag of cash was a legitimate donation and is not some kind of money-laundering scam. (That was ONE TIME Eliot, and the IRS didn’t even NOTICE.) This happened to me once. A tiny old lady in a Cubs jacket showed up to our office with a backpack full of money and it was a very intense morning.
Anyway, what I’m saying is that every year, across the span of roughly two weeks, Hardison’s Nana’s church gets their regular $25 check from that nice Mr. Ford, a visit from the very devout but slightly weird Madam Sofia who wants a private choir recital, an enormous check from a bank in the Bahamas with no name attached, a large direct deposit from a heretofore-undiscovered bond the church invested in a decade ago, and a large bag of cash with a dozen donuts on it and a note reading THANK YOU FOR THE NEW ROOF IT WAS VERY SLIPPERY AND FUN. PLEASE BUY STUFFED ANIMALS FOR CHILDREN WHO NEED STUFFED ANIMALS.
I think Columbo is the only good contemporary detective serial for a lot of reasons but mostly because you never really see a weird little gremlin man who causes problems on purpose and annoys rich people into accidentally confessing to murder anymore
Shows like Dragnet and Law & Order et al are unconscionable pro-police propaganda. Columbo is pro-"weird guy who's just sort of here" propaganda
I don't think he ever actually joined the police force I think he just showed up one day and wouldn't leave
I think it works out because Columbo is only a cop because that’s the quickest and easiest way to explain why he’s always showing up at crime scenes. He doesn’t carry a gun, his dog is absolutely not a police dog, he has no partner, and he seemingly never tackles a case unless it’s a rich person who has committed a murder. We learn nearly nothing about the police force or other cops on the show. Even in the episode where he’s solving a murder committed by a police commissioner, it barely comes up. He has more in common with with the ‘faerie disguised as humble beggar’ trope than with ‘good guy cop’ trope. I would absolutely believe it if it turned out that he was literally some kind of supernatural being, and he uses his limited magical abilities to convince everyone that he’s a detective for the sake of convenience and that’s about it.
You. You get it.
It works because Columbo goes after the only category of person more aggravating than cops, which is rich people
You know who just walked into a police precinct one day for the first time in his life and was immediately accepted as a detective who'd worked there for years?
J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter.
Most people forget or ignore Duke Thomas, when they talk about the batfamily. And even the ones who include him say that he is the 'normal' one. Some people argue with that, and say that Duke is like the rest of the batkids with the example of him jumping out of a moving car and into a bridge.
Duke is way more than that. So, I complied a list of facts and feats of Duke Thomas. This will most likely be multiple parts.
- Duke swear a lot.
- Has a record of getting kicked out of schools.
- Knew Leslie Thompkins way before he met the batfamily. She is also the one who found him foster homes.
- His parents are jokerized, that's why he is put to foster homes. He also takes care of them in the mental hospital.
- He doesn't trust the police.
- He is very sarcastic. Especially to the cops.
- He jumped out of a moving police car and through a bridge. The reason why he was arrested is because he had wore red shoes. In those times, vigilantism was very illegal and appearently red was the symbol of Robin.
- One time, Bruce got amnesia. And Duke, to make him remember, pulled him and himself onto a railway and did not move even when he saw a train coming. Thankfully, Bruce snapped out and pulled them of the rails.
- His mom used to call him Babybird.
- Some villains nicknamed him as Babybat.
- He understands Joker in a way Bruce never did.
- He doesn't see himself apart of the Batfamily.
- His powers are: He can technically see peoples weak parts through how much power they concentrate to them. He can see glimpses of future, rewind the present time like a video. He has increased healing, super fast reflexes. He can see particles in substences. He can literally see light. He also has a bit of telepathic powers. He can speak and be seen on different frequencies, so he can be invisible or speak in a tone that no one would understand. Invisibility.
- To add to it, he did not have shadow powers from birth. A supervillain, kind of mutated his genes so that he could control the darkness.
- His mother had powers.
- First time he went out as Signal, people hated him.
- He was The Signal, way before discovering his powers. He discovered his powers when his father tried to recruit him to his endeavours.
- His father is a supervillain named Gnomon, and he has the same powers as Duke. Gnomon also had a picture of child Duke on his desk.
- Bruce gifted him his own base of operation, called The Hatch.
- Bruce called him a gift to the city.
- He is good with Damian.
This is the end of Part 1. I'll continue in Part 2.
i’m just saying a god that counts every one of the stars and knows them each by name is autistic as fuck
#showing back up on main for exactly 1 minute just to make this post#where's that post like#a god who made all those beetles is not neurotypical#couldnta said it better myself#only the least neurotypical god knows what's going on in my head rn but here y'all have a thing before i vanish back into the void#sorry for playing schrödinger's blogger lately#i am off tumblr in favour of spending my spoons on eating for the moment i'll be back once i get off the edge of starvation friends#pain-induced loss of appetite requires mollycoddling u know how it is#all good just practicing self care#in the immortal words of jack slater. I'll be back#in the meantime sending love#inbox always open to animal pictures & tma anything#(i miss answering y'all's updates on tma listening journeys. Love reading them thank u always for sharing <3)#linden's originals#(fr i promise i'm all good. battery savings mode is for once being proactive. i'm plugging myself in by unplugging if u will#i love y'all & miss spending my spoons here but social media is a little rough on the hyperempathy so it does take the spoons#i'll be back once i don't need those to eat. here's to a neurodivergent god who gave me the worst nervous system ever)
how to use religious iconography and symbolism in a godforsaken, cunt serving, and incredibly transgender way
a gerard way, if you will,
Whenever I'm feeling down, I like to remember how the first person to make and sell stuffed animals was a disabled woman. Thank you Margarete Steiff for your services
This post is getting some notes, so let me tell you a little about her history and the company.
[Image ID: A black and white photograph of a woman in a long black dress and a wheelchair. In her hands she holds a teddy bear with overalls on. /End image ID]
Appolonia Margarete Steiff was born in Giegen, Germany on 24 July 1847. At just 18 months old, she would contract a high fever that lead to paralysis in her legs and limited use of her right arm, but wouldn't be diagnosed with Polio until she was 3. While her parents aggressively consulted with doctors and travelled to find Margaret treatment to restore functionality in her legs- even going as far as pursuing surgery- they were unsuccessful, and Margaret would become a full-time wheelchair user. Of course, this is the 1800's, and at the time being a wheelchair user meant that you could only anticipate a grim future, because it was assumed that the afflicted person could never be a housewife, mother, or wage earner.
Despite the pain in her arm, she would attend needlework classes where she completed her training to become a seamstress at the age of 17. By being paid to teach people how to play the zither, she saved up to buy herself a sewing machine- the first one in Giegen- and would begin working out of the new workshop that her father built for her. She would eventually be told by her cousin's husband to start a real company, and sold handmade felt clothing and garments as her start-up.
Then, in December of 1879, Margaret would find a pattern for a stuffed baby elephant in the German magazine Modenwelt, and began sewing some. She originally gave them to friends as presents, but would start selling them in 1880 once they became popular amongst children. This would be around the same time that Margarete Steiff GmbH would have been officially founded.
By the time she sold over 5,000 stuffed elephants, she began making stuffed toys of other animals- including cats, dogs, mice, horses, monkeys, and rabbits. Pull-along and ride-on toys were also added thanks to the development of metal frames inside the toys.
The basis of many of Steiff's animals after 1897 is attributed to the detailed sketches of Margaret's nephew, Richard Steiff. In 1902, he would present one to Margaret that would leave her feeling skeptical: a stuffed bear dubbed the "Bear 55 PB," with moveable arms and legs and made of mohair, making it the first "cuddly" stuffed toy for children.
[Image ID: A black and white profile photo of a man with a mustache sitting down at a desk. He holds a Teddy Bear up, facing him. In the background is a sign, with the word "Steiff" visible. /End image ID]
Despite her reluctance, she allowed Richard to present the bears at Leipzig toy trade fair in 1903, when Hermann Berg, an American trader, became interested in them and proceeded to order 3,000 to be sent to the US, where they'd see great success. Starting in 1906, these bears would soon come to be known as the "teddy bear," named after then-US president Theodore Roosevelt and his incident with a bear on a hunting trip that he refused to shoot it himself.
[Image ID: A digital scan of Steiff plush tags. They're white with red or black text, and one is yellow with red text. They feature an outline of a Teddy Bear with a button on its right ear, next to their logo and slogan, all in German. The backs of the tags feature standard material and product information. One tag is black and wavy, showing Margaret Steiff's signature in white and plain text underneath it reading "Margarete Steiff Edition". /End image ID]
A major part of their brand is their trademark "button on ear," created in 1904 in order to help their customers identify their genuine, high-quality products from the numerous cheap imitations. To this day, Steiff products can still be identified with this same brand sign.
Unfortunately, Margaret would die unexpectedly at the age of 61 on May 9th 1909, after suffering a severe lung infection from a case of pneumonia. Her passionate and devoted nephews would take over her company, just as Margaret had wished, as a way of honoring her life. Just a year later, Steiff would win the Grand Prix at the world exhibition in Brussels.
[Image ID: A modern photoshoot of current Steiff plushies around a black and white set. Text above it reads "Celebrating 140 years". The plushies include four elephants and four bears, all with a button on their right ear and another on their chest/side. On top of the photo is the modern Steiff logo on a card, reading: "1880-2020. Tradition. Craftsmanship. Quality since 1880." It's signed with Margaret Steiff's same signatuture. /End image ID.]
Today Steiff is still going strong, and is widely regarded as being among the most high-quality toy manufacturers in the world, having produced more than 20,000 other stuffed animal designs. Margaret is also still revered as one of the greatest leaders in the toy industry, one that people still visit the grave of to pay their respects to one of history's most successful disabled woman entrepreneurs.
all cyberpunk stories are like “If you wanna crack open a cybercroissant this nasty, you’re gonna need a real top notch e-driller. i know a guy- Toledo Killswitch- he’s got the frag ordinance you need to grizzle this bocce ball.”
If you’re terribly curious why this is, it’s because William Gibson – the guy whose work is largely synonymous with first-wave literary cyberpunk – spent most of the 1970s bumming around the Toronto drug scene (for many years he claimed he’d moved to Canada in order to avoid the Vietnam draft, though he later admitted that it was mostly for easier access to weed), and much of the distinctive argot of his work is based on the youth counterculture slang he observed during that period of his life. So basically the reason that dialogue in classic cyberpunk sounds Like That is because the characters all talk like teenage Canadian stoners from the 70s.
The funniest part of this is that a guy in the 1970s wanted weed and used draft dodging as an excuse instead of the other way round
My adaptation of the God of Arepo short story, which was originally up at ShortBox Comics Fair for charity. You can get a copy of the DRM-free ebook here for free - and I'd encourage you to donate to Mighty Writers or The Ministry of Stories in exchange.
Again it's an honour to be drawing one of my favourite short stories ever. Thank you so much for the original authors for creating this story; and for everyone who bought a copy and donated to the above non-profits.
the thing about the joker
is that - well, even canonically, he’s not actually “insane.” in the most canonical version of his backstory (bc there are many conflicting incarnations, but this one is the touchstone for a lot of later canon), he was part of a street gang before falling into a vat of Nondescript Toxic Waste that damaged his melanin production and That’s It. he supposedly “lost his mind” after seeing his reflection, which is absurd on many levels. no. he’s not “insane.” what he is, is an angry white boy.
the thing about the joker is that he exults in his own uncontainability. He laughs, because all of gotham - all the world - is built to be his playground. the only lunatic thing about him is the lunacy of ~Society~, to borrow from the joker’s own playbook; the lunacy of the joker lies in the world that grants him power: in the inheritance of loss: in white privilege, and what it means for everyone else.
“to prove a point.” those were the joker’s exact words, when he shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon. she asked why: he laughed. “to prove a point.”
because that’s all he ever does. he hurts people because he can. and because all the power in the world can’t save him from getting hurt - and isn’t that just peachy?
because the thing about the joker is that he can get hurt. he has been hurt. but he has so much more capacity to harm than to be harmed. he is immortal. he and he alone will never have to face the consequences of the hurt that he inflicts on other people.
so then: why not hurt them? misery loves company, after all.
the joker is the embodiment and end result of our own social system: the madness of the exception: the laughter of the white man: the imprecation to smile, as he kills you.
(no one ever says it, i find, but it’s still true: barbara deserves to kill him.)
and who, then, is the batman? if the joker is the yin to his yang? if they’re two sides of one irredeemable coin, if they represent the “balance” of an unjustifiable system - who is he if not another white man?
because he is. Bruce Wayne is a white boy born into unspeakable privilege and forced to endure suffering anyway; who copes with his suffering by taking it out on others; who copes with his suffering, not by taking advantage of the world as it is, but by attempting to reshape it. to make it in his own image - as if it isn’t already his, as if claiming it further will crush out the pain.
the batman is the benevolent oppressor to the joker’s malevolent one. he changes nothing, in the end. two privileged white boys with their own respective navel-gazing grudges - where, after all, lies the difference between benevolence and malevolence?
because they are not “chaos” and “order.” not really. They are laissez-faire laughter and law. Joker exults in the disease of the system, Batman seeks to treat its symptoms, but neither of them will ever change anything about the root cause. because they may have suffered the faults of this system, but they still benefit so much more from it as it exists. Uphold it or break it, neither of them wants to change the law.
but the law is only as good as the people it’s made to protect. and who does that law protect, really?
waylon jones is, in one issue, explicitly depicted as Black. between that and his skin disorder, there has never once been room for his character to be any more than a monster: king croc is, always, a character to be violated and brutalized, over and over and over and still - always - written as the villain. (he tried so hard to scrape out a place for himself, so many times, in so many incarnations, and each and every time he finds himself relegated once more to the sewers. he will never be anyone’s king. there is no place under the sun for people like him.)
victor fries only ever wanted to save his wife, and a capitalist mogul decided a few extra numbers on his eight-digit paycheck were more important than the people whose lives depended on that money. fries’ body was damaged to disability by that choice, left without the resources to find a cure for his wife, and he robbed banks because there was no other option available to him. we seem to have forgotten, or maybe never really understood, why that matters. why a desperate man trying to save his life and that of his loved ones under the crushing gears of capitalism is a villain, and the one who stops him is our hero. why, under the law batman upholds, a bank vault and a CEO’s hoard is worth more than a life.
poison ivy just wants to live, too. wants a life not defined by the devastation of her body, of the beings that exist as extensions of her, a life where green and growing things are not commodities to be plowed up and poisoned and destroyed for the sake of another man’s profit. these are villains; they are written as such. these are their motives.
who does batman fight for, really? who is our hero, this emblem of our law?
is he our hero? ours, the broken and bleeding members of the world he claims to protect?
who does the law protect, except him - him, and the joker?
#self-rb for the day crew and also bc i just fixed an embarrassing typo so Take 2#this is not a bruce wayne hate post#for the record. there is so much to be said in a bruce wayne hate post about child abuse and authorship and diversity of canon#but this isn't about bruce wayne. it isn't even really about the joker#i'm stuck on batman. batman as a story. batman as a myth#because the myths we tell and the threads that run consistently through them despite the multitude of tellers and times -#those say so much more than people give them credit for#who batman is - who his villains are - what those heroes and rogues represent? that *matters.* on a level wholly distinct from comic fandom#because one of the few things that remains true of batman across his many incarnations and authors and settings and media#is that: he stands for the law. (except for all the ways in which he breaks it.) his only role is to catch the criminals#when he loses control and begins dispensing punishment he must be drawn back from the edge. because that is not batman#batman is jim gordon's only deputy. batman is the myth of the Good Cop#and the joker? the joker is batman without the law#this too is one of the few strains that carry through nearly all tellings. the joker is never his opposite:#the joker is him without a direction. without restraint. without limits. without control#and these things say a lot about the world beyond batman. about the storytellers behind him. who - to them - is a hero? who is human?#and who is a monster? the joker is a monster because he is lawless. because he is ''mad.'' because he looks wrong#bruce wayne is a hero because he is lawful. a dark hero because he walks very close to the line of that law - but lawful still#and what is that law? what law do these storytellers see fit to uphold? for which characters does that law do any good?#which characters explicitly harmed by that law are disposable? which are villains by birth?#the fact that someone made the creative decision to depict king croc as Black in a 2008 graphic novel where he went cannibal -#the fact that the issue where babs was assaulted and paralyzed was also the issue in which batman sat down and sympathized with the joker -#that all of these villains are neurodivergent or queer-coded or intersex or disabled or Disfigured or just plain not white -#it says a lot. not just about the comics; about the world in which so many writers have crafted this consistent narrative of heroic cruelty#the world that accepts these as our villains. these as our heroes. it says a lot. and it *matters.*#batman#dc#dc comics#linden writes an essay#linden in the tags
when a nonbinary girl gets bit by a mosquito call that it/she