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Wait what's a buildings fire evacuation plan if you aren't supposed to use the elevator to get down

#important

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Lucy Lawless was not a particularly burly woman, but somehow she made Xena seem like a fucking tank and I don’t understand how.

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I got a tumblr, it really was quite great

I blog about a lot of things, but mostly what I ate.

I thought it was a sweet gig, it really was quite cushy.

Then they went and banned me, ‘cause all I ate was pussy.

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Disabled Representation Has Come Farther Than You Think

You’ve Just Been Conditioned Not to See It.

I recently got into a huge fight with an abled friend about disabled representation, in which he was completely convinced that the stance he held was that of an ally. He’s a long time friend of mine and I know he really did think he was fighting for us and coming from a place of trying to help us.

And it really got me thinking about the way abled people perceive disabled people. And how that message is internalised and reinforced in so many ways.

My friend was trying to say that characters like Cyborg, Misty knight, Daredevil, Toph, Edward Elric, Bucky, Nebula, etc were not good representation. And he at first refused to listen to me (an actual disabled person) when I was like; no, we like that. we love that. we LOVE seeing badass and competent and sexy disabled people. It’s validating and empowering.

His argument was that it didn’t really count because nobody saw them as disabled and that it would be the same thing as saying Gamora is black representation.

While I understand where he was coming from, both of us also being black, it was hard to get him to understand how it wasn’t the same thing.

Gamora is a black actress painted green to portray a green-skinned alien. She has black features, yes, but within the narrative she very much is not a black woman. She’s an alien.

But a disabled character is always still a disabled character. Regardless of how high tech or SciFi or magical or fantastical the world or universe is; an amputee with a prosthesis is still an amputee. They are still disabled. Yes, even if their prosthesis shoots lasers.

And other characters, like Toph and Daredevil, who are both blind, have superpowers/superhuman abilities that allow them to overcome their disability. That does not make them less disabled.

Their blindness still impacts their everyday lives. They can’t read. They can’t draw. They don’t know what things or people look like, or what color things are. They can’t read someone’s facial expressions during a conversation. They can’t follow a map without assistance.

When I asked my friend for examples of what he considered good disabled representation he said Professor X, Oracle, and the Thinker. And that made me pause and I won’t lie, it upset me. It felt degrading. I got kind of angry at him and it got a little heated.

Because what he was saying is: the smart one in the wheelchair that never actually joins the battle because their body is too frail? Those are the only good disabled characters? The ones who still need to be protected and treated tenderly and are physically weaker?

Do we only exist when you can view us as some subhuman lesser other that you can take pity on?

But it’s not only my friend who thinks this way.

I’ve seen quite a few arguments online about people who don’t think Edward Elric is disabled, despite being an amputee.

Who don’t think Cyborg is disabled, despite the fact that his entire power set is due to a life support and mobility aid device.

And my friend was shocked that I, and many other disabled people, find these depictions of strong and confident and capable disabled people empowering. He fully expected that I would find those depictions offensive.

And that’s when it really hit me.

The issue is not that characters like Bucky or Toph or Daredevil are bad representations of disabled characters.

The issue is that people don’t perceive them as disabled. They’ve internalized this belief that disabled people have to be weak and delicate and fragile and in some way physically inferior.

They’re only considered disabled if they’re tragic and/or weak. Or ugly. People love to project a tragic subhuman otherness onto disabled people who are ugly.

If they’re cool and badass that confuses them. That doesn’t fit with the narrative that’s been built in their heads.

The idea of a competent, confidant, and strong disabled character, especially a cool disabled character is just so completely foreign to them that they don’t even consider it.

Now I’m not saying that depictions of disabled characters like Oracle or professor X are bad or harmful. We need representation of disabled people who aren’t strong and don’t have superpowers and maybe don’t feel particularly empowered. That’s a genuine representation of many disabled people.

It just isn’t the only one.

I think the issue with disabled representation is not that it doesn’t exist (as I’ve seen many abled people online claim in our defense) but that we need to shift the way we think of disabled people so we stop overlooking a lot of the really cool and badass and awesome disabled characters we do already have.

So if you read this far through this essay, please stop for a moment and consider the preconceptions you have about disabled people.

Have you ever overlooked a disabled character because they were strong, powerful, charismatic, or, (God forbid!) SEXY?

And if so, I’d ask you to take some time to examine in yourself why you don’t think of disabled people as being able to be those things.

Mod Izzy

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The hilarious part about Faith and how incredibly gay she comes across is that it's all a natural side-effect of her intended narrative role. According to Whedon she wasn't intentionally written to be a queer or even queer-coded character, but the way she is written and her metaphorical function necessarily meant she came across as queer-coded. I'll explain what I mean:

1) As Buffy's shadow, Faith is meant to be symbolic of Buffy's repressed desires, and specifically her frustrated sexuality. Buffy is dealing with imposed chastity throughout S3, first with her trauma over Angel getting in the way of a relationship with Scott, and then the curse preventing her from being physical with Angel. It's the centre point of Enemies, its touched on in Amends, and is one of the reasons they break up. There's a reason the season climaxes with Angel and Buffy in a passionate embrace, making orgasm faces as he 'penetrates' her. It's a whole season of sexual frustration for Buffy.

Faith needs to be constantly reminding Buffy of the thing she can't have - sex. She needs to talk about sex to Buffy - and she does, extensively. Faith is written as a very sexual person in general, but it's specifically and disproportionately aimed towards Buffy, because that's her narrative role. So you end up with this character who is constantly going around like "hey Buffy do you like sex? you should think about sex now. sex. when I'm on screen the main thing on your mind should be sex and having it". Which begs the question - why does Faith want Buffy to have sex? Symbolically, it's because she represents part of Buffy, and Buffy wants to have sex. But on a pure character level... what is the explanation? What is motivating Faith to constantly talk about sex to Buffy? A few instances you can write off as her making Buffy uncomfortable for jokes, but not all of them. How it comes across is that Faith has some sexual interest in Buffy, and is probing for her feelings.

2) Faith is a Seductress. That's not a comment about her character, that's her function in the story. She is the version of Buffy who goes down a darker path, and is trying to seduce her into doing the same thing. Part of Buffy's arc in S3 is resisting this temptation, and the symbol of what she is resisting is Faith. So Faith must be an enticing, seductive figure. To quote Passion of the Nerd's review, if Faith is there to to tempt Buffy into a moral dark side, it only makes sense that she is, well, tempting. The seduction is happening on many levels.

Faith is more or less filling the Femme Fatale archetype: the seductive, sexual figure who leads the Hero off their path. It's a trope you see all the time in male-led stories, going back to goddamn The Odyssey. Buffy as a character was invented as a simple gender-swap of an old horror trope, and part of the appeal of the show is that she gets to fill the role of The Hero as a woman. So what happens when you gender-swap The Hero and don't gender-swap the Femme Fatale? You get a gay story, that's what.

3) The Faith arc of S3 is a recreation of the Angel arc of S2. It is structured in the exact same way, with the two having a push-and-pull in the early parts of the season, a setback in their relationship in episode 7, getting closest again mid-season before a night of passion that ends in sudden tragedy. Angel/Faith then turn to the dark side, become the Big Bad, and show that they are beyond saving in episode 17. The season ends with Buffy having to fight and the kill them in order to save others. This is all an intentional recycling, as part of the show building up the Trolley Problem and the idea of Buffy being a killer, repeatedly escalating it to get us to The Gift. What this means is that Faith steps into the role that Buffy's love interest played in the previous season. This is the story that we have just had told to us as a tragic love story. We see it again, and guess what? It's still a tragic love story. Only now Faith is in the role of the love interest.

4) Part of the conflict surrounding Buffy and Faith is Buffy's fear of being "Single White Female'd". She fears Faith might steal her loved ones, and Faith does threaten that. She gets along with her mother, her friends... but most of all, her love interests. Buffy's fear of being replaced manifests as Faith trying to literally seduce away anyone romantically linked to Buffy. Angel, Scott Hope, Xander, later Riley, Spike, Robin Wood... Faith is comprehensively and exclusively attracted to men that Buffy dated. I'm honestly surprised she didn't find Owen and Parker from somewhere for a night in the sack. Again, this makes perfect heterosexual sense from a symbolic point it view - she threatens to take Buffy's place in the narrative, so she takes her place in relationships - but on a character level it becomes ambiguous. Is she actively trying to replace Buffy? Or is she trying to stop Buffy dating anyone for another reason? The simple fact is, there is exactly one common denominator with all of Faith's romantic entanglements: Buffy.

It's a canonical aspect of Faith's character that she is jealous of Buffy. We see that made explicit in Enemies - she's jealous of everything Buffy has: her family, her comfortable home life, her friends, her narrative standing, and of course her loving partners. So of course Faith displays jealousy whenever Buffy is involved with a guy. It's a necessary part of building Faith as this figure of Want and Envy. But how it plays out on screen isn't that Faith is jealous of Buffy because she wants these other guys - of course not, because we see her look jealously through the window at Buffy and Riley in This Year's Girl and Riley obviously means nothing to her. Rather, it very much appears that she is jealous of these other guys, because she wants Buffy.

There's also the added bonuses that come from the show playing with so many metaphors, that sometimes they cross in interesting ways. One of Faith's main purposes is to celebrate being a Slayer, and to encourage the same in Buffy. She wants Buffy to accept and embrace being a Slayer. Here, Slayerhood is standing in for independence and hedonism and making your own rules, all the things that Faith is encouraging. But one of the many other metaphors used is the 'coming out' metaphor. "Have your tried not being a slayer?" "It's because you didn't have a strong father figure isn't it." "I've tried to march in the Slayer Pride parade." It's a note that's hit really hard specifically around the time in the show that Faith is introduced. So if you carry this metaphor on, then Faith becomes an out-and-proud lesbianSlayer, trying to convince Buffy to accept and embrace her sexuality.

And it has a recursive effect too. All this stuff contributes towards Faith feeling like a very queer character. And Faith, of course, is Buffy's shadow self, meant to represent her unconscious desires. So when the symbol of your unconscious desires is so lesbian-coded, then the implication becomes that one of your unconscious desires is lesbian desire. Faith's existence as a part of Buffy implies the existence of Buffy's bisexuality. Which contributes to the relationship feeling ever more queer, which makes Faith even gayer.

I find this absolutely hilarious, because the queer subtext was never intended. Joss Whedon apparently was annoyed that people read this into their relationship, and the commentary from the other writers that does address it tends to point to Dushku's performance. And yeah, she is definitely leaning into that in her portrayal. But the main reasons that so many people have this reading all come from the writing. It's all stuff that is integral to the point of her character. Every metaphor and function in the narrative, every symbolic purpose she has, none of it was meant to be gay and yet it all leads directly to Faith appearing to be totally and completely gay. The queerness is accidental and unavoidable. And I just find that really fucking funny.

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The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.

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You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

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i feel like tumblr will appreciate this

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Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed a ban on transgender students playing girls’ sports on Tuesday, becoming the second Republican governor to overrule state lawmakers who have taken on youth sports in a broader culture war over how Americans view gender and sexuality.

Cox joins Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, who vetoed a statewide ban on Monday. Holcomb said Indiana’s Legislature had not demonstrated that transgender kids had undermined fairness in sports.

“I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion,” Cox wrote in a letter to Utah legislative leaders.

The vetoes come as Cox and Holcomb’s counterparts in nearly a dozen conservative-leaning states have enacted similar legislation and politicians have honed in on transgender kids in sports as a campaign issue in states ranging from Missouri to Pennsylvania.

In Utah, minutes after the veto, legislative leaders announced they would convene lawmakers on Friday to further consider the bill and discuss overriding the veto. To succeed, they’ll need support from two-thirds of lawmakers, which means they’ll have to sway some who voted against the ban in the final hours before the Statehouse adjourned for the year.

“We can not ignore the scientific facts that biological boys are built differently than girls. Doing nothing is taking a step backward for women. Finding a solution to this complicated issue is necessary to maintain fair competition now and in the future,” Utah Senate President Stuart Adams said in a statement.

The issue was one of the most contentious of the year in a state where most lawmakers are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and respectful politics are prized as “The Utah Way.” Deeply conservative leaders and LGBTQ advocates have brokered compromises to advance rights and protections in the past. But not this time.

There are four transgender players out of 85,000 who are competing in school sports after being ruled eligible by the state’s high school athletic association. There are no public concerns about competitive advantages. Only one competes in girls’ sports.

“Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day,” Cox said in the letter explaining his veto, in which he cited suicide rates for transgender youth. “Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”

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okay so ive been avoiding hearing anything about the new harry potter game. im sure a lot of us have. if yall dont know, its a major game and not a shitty mobile game or anything. but i just found out its apparently about fucking suppressing the goblin rebellion. no, not helping them bc hey maybe that would be a good thing. nope! youre tasked with putting the goblins back in their place apparently.

for anyone who doesnt remember, the goblins were the banker characters who worked in gringotts and looked Uncomfortably Like jewish stereotypes. and youre suppose to suppress their rebellion, where theyre rebelling against the fact that like most nonhuman magical creatures, theyre treated like shit by wizards. yep :)

click thru the top tweet to read the whole thread with all the screenshots, it just gets worse and worse but jesus fucking christ, HOW. i know i shouldnt be surprised that this fucking francise of all of them is pulling this shit but how fucking blatant can you be.

if it wasnt enough that youd be lining the terfs pockets buying this shit, is the plot being fucking blatant ass alt right propaganda enough

#oh holy shit #this is disgusting

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okay so ive been avoiding hearing anything about the new harry potter game. im sure a lot of us have. if yall dont know, its a major game and not a shitty mobile game or anything. but i just found out its apparently about fucking suppressing the goblin rebellion. no, not helping them bc hey maybe that would be a good thing. nope! youre tasked with putting the goblins back in their place apparently.

for anyone who doesnt remember, the goblins were the banker characters who worked in gringotts and looked Uncomfortably Like jewish stereotypes. and youre suppose to suppress their rebellion, where theyre rebelling against the fact that like most nonhuman magical creatures, theyre treated like shit by wizards. yep :)

click thru the top tweet to read the whole thread with all the screenshots, it just gets worse and worse but jesus fucking christ, HOW. i know i shouldnt be surprised that this fucking francise of all of them is pulling this shit but how fucking blatant can you be.

if it wasnt enough that youd be lining the terfs pockets buying this shit, is the plot being fucking blatant ass alt right propaganda enough

#*sighs heavily* #well I was already not interested but now I'm super not interested #side note: where is this mythical society where queers and disabled folks are prioritized? i want to join it

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Cat Cat Cat! Purim is coming up soon. Can you tell us the Purim story, with swears?

oh my god, is this my thing now. OKAY, fair warning, this one’s gonna be… real long.

OKAY SO LIKE. way back in the waybackwhen, we’ve been kicked outta judea for the… first? second? first time. (we got kicked out of israel/judea a… few times. we got kicked out of spain twice, we got kicked out of the netherlands three times, we got kicked out of france and bavaria five times, we got kicked out of mainz in particular four times

god bless the gentiles honestly they’re god’s appointed travel agency. ANYWAY)

so we’re in persia. and we’re under the rule of king ahasueare– king ahahasay– king ahasueueueueue-

KING AHASARARUARAUAEREASS, who is having a Party

and king ahdahahaah has a wife, vashti, who is among the hottest women in the whole country.

king aheshhh, who is quite drunk at this point, is like VASHTI. VASHTI I WANT YOU TO COME OUT AND HAVE FUN AT THIS PARTY. I WANT YOU TO COME OUT AND DANCE FOR US AND WEAR YOUR CROWN

vashti is like ughhhhhhhh FINE

king aaaaaaahhahaha is like …ONLY YOUR CROWN

vashti is like …not fine

so, because this is ancient persia and men are terrible, vashti is promptly divorced and king aughjesus decides to hold the Country’s Biggest Beauty Contest, where the Most Beautiful Women in Persia will all audition to be his wife!!! (I TOLD YOU MEN WERE TERRIBLE)

MEANWHILE haman, a smug motherfucker with a three-pointed hat, is a councillor for the king. haman, because ancient persia does not have any kind of government that could be labeled “sensible”, makes a law that says Everyone In This Country Must Bow Down To Me When I Pass, because Reasons.

BUT, guess who does not bow down to people, you guessed right, it is the jews. chiefly and specifically in this instance an equally smug (but much less powerful) motherfucker by the name of mordecai.

haman passes mordecai, is like “you don’t look like you’re bowing??? that is not a bow shape??? exPLAIN.” mordecai is like “r u god? i don’t think yr god? i think god would have better taste in hats? so”

so haman is plotting like a motherfucker, which he is, and mordecai is Mad Afraid, but there is no time for plotting or fear because guess what it’s beauty contest time, motherfuckers

and guess who mordecai has enrolled in it, it is HIS NIECE, ESTHER

esther is hotter than vashti, but, like, in a chiller way. in my head, samira wiley. (in my head, esther is a lesbian. in my head esther is my girlfriend. right. ANYWAY)

king ahooleyhoo immediately picks esther, as she is the Most Beautiful Woman In A Ten Thousand Mile Radius (as are all jews OBVIOUSLY), and she is taken up into the palace to be the most beautiful and powerful woman in a ten thousand mile radius. and she is also mad smart, so

meanwhile haman has finished his Plotting and has resulted in this: he is going to get revenge against mordecai by Killing All The Jews.

“oh yeah,” say the jews. “real original.”

mordecai goes, well, coincidentally, i happen to have a niece who is the queen of persia. and ollies over like ESTHER? ESTHER HAMAN IS PLOTTING TO KILL US ALL. ALL THE JEWS. DO SOMETHING

esther is like, i have a solution to this. the solution involves getting naked.

so she holds a banquet for her husband the king, and at the banquet is like WOW… GOSH… I’M VERY NAKED… AT THIS BEAUTIFUL BANQUET. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A LOT OF SEX AND GOOD FOOD, DARLING HUSBAND

darling husband is like fuck yes, gets drunk as shit. esther is like okay. yes. now that you are full of good food and heavily sexed up, can i have a thing. can that thing be that you vow to protect me from anyone who wants to kill me

…sure, says king aheshehaara. sg.

great, says esther. havin a banquet tomorrow night too. be there or be square

king ajldfghfdghk;dfghufgsdoi has no desire to be square, so he comes to the banquet tomorrow night to find that esther has also invited… HAMAN? “well,” he thinks to himself, “i have never pictured this threesome before, but y’know, life is a rich tapestry”

but eventually esther goes “ah okay remember that promise to protect me from anyone who would kill me. what if i told you. i knew a dude who would do that thing”

“I WOULD SUPER KILL THAT DUDE,” says king ahassafrass, who has exactly 2 problem-solving methods

“great,” says esther. “what if i told you… THIS IS THE DUDE.” AND SHE POINTS AT THE DUDE. WHO IS HAMAN. WHO IS AT THE TABLE!!!

!!!!! says king ahahahahhfewsse.

!!!!!! says esther.

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ says haman.

so esther REVEALS SHE IS A JEW! and that haman is implicitly PLOTTING TO KILL HER! (“i didn’t– I WAS NOT AWARE,” says haman. “WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE FUCKING CHECKED THEN,” says esther. “OR WAIT. ANOTHER SOLUTION. IT’S DAWNING ON ME. AN EPIPHANY. YOU COULD NOT KILL PEOPLE”)

the king has haman hanged on the gallows on which he was planning to hang all the jews. and guess who is instituted as councillor in his place, that’s right, MORDECAI

who declares that the anniversary of Us Not Being Dead shall be celebrated every year forever with dressing up in costumes, and also that we shall eat little cookies shaped like haman’s hat, and also that whenever haman’s name is mentioned we will yell like hell

hey, says king aharseadslic. could, theoretically, this holiday include getting so drunk you can’t tell the difference between mordecai and haman

…i guess so, says mordecai

right, says king ahasuerus. carry on, haman

AND SO WE CONTINUE THESE TRADITIONS OF EATING COOKIES, WEARING COSTUMES, AND GETTIN SLOSHED, even SCATTERED ACROSS THE WORLD; and yes, i will be spending my thursday gettin drunk on my way to rome

so pour yrself a whiskey, put on a fake beard, and raise a glass: it’s purim 5776, and guess what, motherfuckers? 

you still ain’t managed to kill us yet.

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Because sometimes we all just need to see a guy head-bump a beautiful Beluga whale

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I figured out the secret life hack that the ableds don’t want you to know about.

My fellow chronic pain and limited mobility bitches, if you’re looking for ways stay active and get some exercise while working around your issues instead of against them, look up “[Thing you want to do] for seniors.”

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I drew this up for Raul Julia’s birthday today.  He’d have been 75 today.

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The thing that gets me the most about critics of Terry Pratchett’s novels who say they’re not important or “literature” because they’re “not realistic” is this:  

By what yardstick are we supposed to be measuring “realism”?

See, I’m willing to bet that the yardstick these critics use is that oh so popular model of “the real world is really a terrible place, so the world of this piece of media is full of barbarism and grotesque cruelty.”*  And Terry Pratchett never, ever fell into that dismal trope.  He didn’t hunt his characters for sport.  There’s no gratuitous sexual violence (no sexual violence at all, that I can think of).  Even if a death or an act of evil is senseless from an in-world point of view, it isn’t random and senseless from a narrative perspective, thrown in to shock or to remind readers/viewers that “that’s reality.”  The Discworld isn’t a happy rainbow place all the time.  But it’s not a bleak pit of despair, either.  There are bad people of all stripes, from literal torturers and megalomaniacs to regular folk who perpetuate the kind of small mundane badness pretty much every human is guilty of at one time or another.  But there are good people too.  And sometimes some of them die along the way, but ultimately the good people win and the world is changed for the better or at least doesn’t get any worse.  Is that really “unrealistic”?

Terry Pratchett didn’t write a bunch of books about people being brutal to each other because “that’s human nature.”  Terry Pratchett acknowledged–often, even–that humanity is prone to base acts.  But what his books are really about, is humanity’s ability to rise above that.  Terry Pratchett wrote about protagonists who are imperfect, doing good in the world often against their first instincts.  He wrote about situations where it is hard to be good, but where his protagonists choose it anyway.

Rincewind is a coward who craves only boredom, but he steps up to the plate and saves the world whenever it turns out no one else can.  

Sam Vimes is a bitter, cynical recovering alcoholic who is desperate to be a better man and to do what’s just for everyone.

Granny Weatherwax is an aloof, blunt loner who finds “being the good one” a burden, but she works tirelessly to protect and serve her steading, just so everyone else can be free to go about their normal little everyday lives.

Brutha starts off blindly believing that “purifying” sinners is necessary, but he learns to think for himself and when later on he has the chance to kill the worst of the Quisition’s torturers?  He carries him through a desert, instead, and ends up reforming a religion.

These are just a few of so many examples.  And are they “unrealistic”?  Is the idea that imperfect beings can choose to do good even if it is difficult “fantasy”?  Is it really too hard to believe that maybe even if the nature of humanity inclines toward selfishness and greed and all that terrible stuff, humanity can also do better than that, if individuals choose to?

Because, wow, to me that’s an awfully uninspiring view of “reality”.  It’s kind of a boring one, too, when it comes to media.  If all you’re going to show me is a series of escalating cruelty for shock value, because “in the real world good people suffer” or whatever edgy thing you think is “realistic”, I’m not interested, sorry.

Give me Terry Pratchett’s world, where readers can think that if a screwup like Rincewind or someone as bad-tempered as Granny can do good maybe they, the readers, can do good too.  That if Vimes can turn his life around and work for justice, and if Brutha can question authority and stand up to oppression, maybe they could help change things, too.  Give me that “fantasy” any day.

That’s the kind of “literature” I want.

*Either that or they just see books where magic is real and immediately put on their “I’m a grown up, grown ups don’t believe in magic” hats and roll their eyes, sure in the knowledge of their superiority, because what value could there ever be in having a little imagination, right?