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#im always like a week away from getting into womens wrestling

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i think about this comic at least once a week

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Happy Birthday, Clark Kent (my best friend, Clark Kent!!!)

Inspired by @januariat ‘s incredibly tender art of Clark in his apartment. It’s stuck with me for a year- something about him allowing himself to be soft and human. To take the time for himself to care for his plants, to make a home cooked meal, to stand in a golden patch of light while humming along to the radio. It’s just… him.

So, to pay homage to his birthday (found-in-the-corn-day?), I give you a little tender moment as Clark, in his shitty Metropolis shoebox apartment!

#clark kent apartment cinematic universe!!! #dcu #superman

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being a dyke is one of the most beautiful things this world has to offer. has anyone heard of this

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saw a post the other day full of people complaining about helping older people use computers, about how clueless they can be, how frustrating it is to have to tell them basics like where to click, exactly what to type, how some people just never seem to get it. then an addition was someone who works in a library sharing a story of a ninety-something woman who picked it up instantly. it’s not difficult, this elderly woman said! wow heartwarming.

i’m here to say that plenty of older and disabled and otherwise marginalised people do not know how to use computers and in some cases will find it very difficult if not impossible to learn to use them. for many people it is difficult. it can be insurmountable. we should be fighting for a world where vulnerable people who are not computer literate can use computers with assistance when they want to, but where they do not need to use computers, ever. this is a serious access issue as so much government paperwork is moving to being online only. your frustration at working a job that likely overworks and underpays you to help people use these computers - please think before turning it on the disenfranchised and vulnerable people who rely on you for assistance and resources.

it’s an annoyance for you? then think about why is it that governments habitually move the resources that vulnerable people need to live to online-only when they know as well as you and i do that the digital divide is real. think about how intentionally difficult governments and agencies make it to access forms and paperwork and everything else that is needed to claim such a small amount of money as people currently get when they are out of work and trying to claim benefits, or on allowances for refugees, etc. how much are governments dedicated to taking away people’s dignity and autonomy by swapping to a system that millions of people do not have access to without going into a public library and asking for help, if there’s even anyone there who is able to or allowed to help? i can get people set up with email and find websites for them but im not even allowed to help with sensitive forms - i can only do what i can, you know. i wish it was more.

before i started this job i thought of myself as impatient. i’m not going to tell you any stories in detail because my library patrons didn’t consent to being A Teaching Moment. but i have requests from “difficult” patrons every day. i take a deep breath and if i don’t have a queue, i try to help. i smile and say “don’t worry” when someone is apologising over and over because they were never taught this and they are stressed out and it doesn’t make sense to them. not everyone grew up with neopets and Hotmail. it makes you no better than them if you did.

i’m not perfect but i’m trying. just… think about it, next time you roll your eyes because another old lady doesn’t know how to use gmail, even though you’ve already shown her what to click. ask if your library has thought about seeing up dedicated sessions for helping people use computers if they need assistance (maybe it’ll take some of the work away from you and give you more breathing space). make leaflets telling people where they can go nearby for help with computers - maybe some local charities or non-profits have drop-in sessions. join campaigns for easier access, for letting people who can’t use computers do what they need to without needing to find some way to get online. all of these are more useful in holding solidarity than in just being frustrated that another person in their seventies, eighties, nineties, struggles to use a computer.

a couple more notes of things that i think about a lot when it comes to computer access at the library that might not occur to people who don’t routinely help people out with basic computer stuff:

2-factor authentication is the devil. i understand the intention behind it and cyber security is important and difficult! but 2-factor authentication in practice locks out and disenfranchises vulnerable people every day, makes them unable to access their emails and everything else on the web that depends on their email, makes them unable to access their data and government portals, and makes them even more vulnerable than governments already conspire to make them. plenty of people just do not understand how 2FA works. it doesn’t matter how many times the google website says : look at your phone and click on this number. or whatever. if somebody else is not there to tell them what to do — if they haven’t recently had to change their phone number, as many vulnerable people might have had to do — they will not be able to do it.

google have recently been selling chromeboxes to public libraries (and schools) cheap. chromeboxes in public libraries are also the devil. on a windows PC loaded with word, lots of people are happy and able to do what they need to do. the problem comes when they have to log in to a google account just to access a fucking word processor. it’s a scandal how many people are locked out of access to something as simple as a word processor unless they have a google or Microsoft account. we are talking people who don’t want email accounts, who just want to type up a letter to send in the post. Every time I ask online for a good alternative I get something extremely tech-y or like fucking online textpad. we just need a good accessible word clone that runs in a web browser like Word XP. It would make a lot much easier. And yet!

#library haint #literally all of this also true in the us!

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if nobody got me i know @Friends_Table got me

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🍂❄️🌸Applications Announcement!🌸❄️🍂

Hello Friends at the Table fans! We are very excited to announce:

A Chaotic Cataloging: A Seasons of Hieron Fanzine

Applications for #HieronZine contributors will be open from Saturday May 4th until Saturday June 1st.

Introducing the Mod Team:

🌸Muna🌙 @peacereturnedtothevalley - Head Mod + Socials

🥐Katie✒️ @KatieDiek - Production

🍷Lee🐇 @imperialhare - Finance

🎭Avi🗡️ @oziads - Design & Art

🎨Annie🐭 @dancy-nrew - Art

🍊Julian📚 @burins - Writing

🦉Danny✨ @suedeuxnim - Writing

We're super excited to get this project going, hope you are too!

#:3c

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Are You There?

#art

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happy Sunday a couple people (@feyburner and @try-set-me-on-fire and maybe someone else? if so I forget and I'm sorry) have tagged me in snippet stuff! I still can't write atm and I'm not rly sure when I'll be able to (June?? maybe?? please god let this PT round work) but I have been reading old drafts and I found 6k of ancient catws Sam & Bucky road trip fic that for having been written eight years ago still makes me go oogh. maybe it will also make you go oogh!(don't worry I am not posting all 6k.)

“Steve’s probably told you all about the 30s, right?” Bucky says. He’s sitting in the backseat, right in the middle of Sam’s view out the back. They’re somewhere in Nowheresville, North Carolina, so it’s not as annoying as it was when he pulled this shit in Jersey.  

“Not really,” Sam says. He can see Bucky’s silent scoff without even looking, but it’s true. Steve hasn’t told anyone shit about anything. It seems to be his MO. Sam wishes someone would explain to him that the element of surprise doesn’t apply to interpersonal relationships, but probably everyone is assuming that job falls to Sam.

“Really?” Bucky asks. “Nothing? Why the hell am I in your car, then?”

“I mean, he gave me the basics, the two poor little matchboys, y’all had approximately half a penny to rub together, you kept him alive with nothing more than the flame of your undying devotion to warm your little breast, but he didn’t really flesh the story out.”

“Huh,” says Bucky.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sam says, feeling like he might have made a wrong turn somewhere about five conversational miles back, “he cares about you. We all know he cares about you. And when he does talk, it’s nice stuff, you know, ‘Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,’ that kind of shit.”

“Your Steve voice needs work.” Bucky’s picking at the upholstery in the backseat. He hasn’t made a hole yet, which Sam thinks is either a major point in favor of Japanese engineering, or Bucky Barnes is reining himself in for the first time in his life. 

“Always open to suggestions,” Sam says. The hills roll out before them. Someone else might call them wide and welcoming. His skin prickles. They pass another billboard for another peach farm. It’s faded from who knows how many years of Southern sun, the oranges and reds gone ghostly.

“In 1937, he almost died,” Bucky says.

“I kind of got the sense that he did that a lot.”

Bucky chuckles. “Yeah, he did. This was different, though. We called the priest, and the priest came in and stood over him and said a lot of things about absolution, which was funny because Steve never went to confession after his ma stopped making him go.”

“Really?” Sam can’t help himself. “Sorry, I guess I always thought he would’ve been the altar boy type. What with all the guilt and all.”

They passed a lot of quarries going through Virginia, and Bucky’s smile looks familiar, like it’s been blasted into his face. “No, that was always me,” he says. “Steve was always trying to pick fights with anybody stronger’n him, and that included God.”

“Do you still?” Sam asks. It’s a few moments before Bucky replies.

“I go to Mass,” he says. “I don’t go up, though.”

“Oh.” Sam doesn’t know a lot about being Catholic, but he’s pretty sure the wafer part is a big deal.

“Yeah.”

They pass a field, a strip mall, a large block of concrete that’s either a factory or a prison. Bucky’s plant is slightly too small for the cupholder, and it rattles every time the road gets a little rough. It rattles a lot out here.

“The priest tried to put the oil on him, you know, like you’re supposed to at the very end, but Steve was sweating so much it just slid off him. Father said some stuff about easing his passage into the light everlasting, and he left, and it was just me in there, looking down at this little shit, this little bastard who was half my life. He couldn’t breathe, really, just kept making these scared, choked gurgling noises. It was fucking horrible. He wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop making that noise, and I wanted him to die so bad.”

There’s a hawk circling above them. Sam stares blindly out the windshield.

“I reached out and I put my hand on his throat and I wanted to press down. I wanted to make it easy for him. He always tried so damn hard at things. He kept choking and I just pushed down, just the littlest bit, and it stopped, and god, I’ve never loved a silence so much in my life.” 

Bucky’s wrapped his metal hand around the little pot, holding it still. The rattling stops. 

“I let go, obviously. I let go, and he finally fell asleep. I guess maybe I jolted something loose, because he wasn’t making that noise the next day.” He laughs. “Or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit, huh? Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better.” 

Sam pulls left to pass an ancient Honda.

“HYDRA didn’t do shit to me that wasn’t already there.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“Nah,” Bucky says. “It does, though. Because here’s the really fucked up thing, okay. More fucked up than me trying to kill my ‘best friend since childhood, inseparable in schoolyard and battleground,’ even. You wanna hear it?”

Sam doesn’t wanna hear it. He doesn’t. But Bucky needs to say it, and so he breaks yet another of his own rules, and he says, “Whatever you need to tell me, I’m listening.”

Bucky snorts. “Sure, Wilson, sure. I can’t remember, is the thing. I don’t know if I did that then, or if it was another scared kid I killed thirty years later. That sound got pretty fucking familiar after a while. Maybe I dreamed the whole thing. I don’t know. I sure as hell can’t ask Steve, can I?”

#my fic #tag games #catws #sam wilson #bucky barnes #mcu

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Ella M. Bedford (British, 1882-1908)

The Springs of Lethe, 1896

#art #q

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i understand the appeal of publishing "fic with the serial numbers filed off" as original work but i also feel like. what makes something a good fic is at odds with what makes something a good original story.

#i will die on this hill #fic and original writing are different skills! they are good at different things! #so much serial numbers writing falls flat bc in fic you do not have to establish character in the same way. #your audience already cares about the characters! but in original writing you HAVE to make me care about your blorbo #and establish stakes and conflict in a way that fic gets to skip #fic is referential and draws on your existing emotional connections (and doing that well is a skill!) #original writing has to create those emotional hooks wholecloth

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when i have a crush i dont kick my feet or twirl my hair instead i am in my kitchen at 3am pacing in circles with my hands clasped behind my back like a middle-aged divorced detective haunted by a cold case he just cant crack

#Bruce wayne.

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#gay saint

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im Feeling very sorrowful i Am going to drag hector’s corpse around patroclus’ funeral mound for 3 hours to calm down

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dinahbabs. no further notes. I am a lot like you I am alone like you..... help. help!

#dinahbabs #when i can write safely again and can finally finish this gd fic. and also typeset my yuri zine essay for tumblr. then you will see #Spotify