“Miraculous! Adrinette where Marinette is an upperclassman.
Her main interaction with Adrien is at her parent’s shop, where he always grabs
something during lunch break. She’s still a hot mess around him, and he’s still
a complete flirt with Ladybug. Go.” For @littlestartopaz , on the AU meme.
C’mon now, we’ve all basically agreed that I’ve co-opted this
meme as an excuse to get AU prompts and write a lot on every single one of
them. So Marinette is seventeen here and
Adrien is still a lonely fifteen-year-old kid who gets devoted to anyone who
seems like they care about his feelings.
There’s no regard whatsoever for the canon timeline here, we’re
pretending that they’re already working together by the time he starts public
school.
The
first time Adrien Agreste walks into her parents’ bakery, Marinette hides
behind the counter and hyperventilates for a solid minute while he looks
around. She stutters her way through
taking his order, and he gives her a small smile that genuinely makes her heart
stop a little. (She’s going to feel bad
about that later, once she knows how much it bothers him when people get fluttery
over him, but look, just look, he’s a
very handsome boy and she’s awkward, this is a matter of record, Alya has the
proof.)
And
then he actually sits at the counter and picks through his sandwich and talks
to her, and he’s nice and funny and wry, with a sweet self-deprecating
smile. Marinette can barely string a
sentence together, but he doesn’t make fun of her or question her and he seems
fine with pretending that she has no idea who he is. She might die, she might have a heart attack,
but what a way to go, that’s all she’s saying, under those bright green eyes.
I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.
I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.
But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?
Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.
But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?
Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.
So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.
The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.
At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.
They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.
When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.
A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.
The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?
Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.
The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.
Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.
The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.
Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”
The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”
Heroes: “… no~ but…”
The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”
Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.
The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”
Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”
Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”
The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”
Villain: “Indeed.”
Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>
The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”
Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>
The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”
Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”
The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”
Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”
Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”
The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.
But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.
Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.
My first official deadpool headcanon is this. This this this.
Okay but this whole concept actually makes a lot of sense, because villains are a lot more likely to be disfigured/disabled/use adaptive devices (bc ableist tropes), so of course, say, a child amputee is going to be more interested in the villain with a robot arm who almost destroyed New York than the heroes that took him down.
Also, imagine one of the kids gets better, and a few years down the line becomes a villain themself, except their crimes are things like smuggling chemo drugs across the border for families that can’t afford treatment, or stealing from corrupt businessmen to make donations to underfunded hospitals (idk this turned into a Leverage AU or something) and every time the heroes encounter her, they’re like “oh no. she’s getting away. curses. welp, nothing we can do.” Though it isn’t that she can’t take them on; bc of course once the villain from way back when found out what she was up to, he started helping/training her.
“I thought they just hired someone to dress up and pretend to be you,” she says, amazed, when he reveals himself. “I didn’t think they actually got the real you!”
Every year the Villain Wrangler gets a very expensive gift basket from the pair.
and for the kids who don’t get better the villains are there too, they show up to every funeral, they bear too small coffins on their shoulders and the heroes stand aside
they are fierce with grieving families assuring them that their child will not be forgotten, and they don’t balk at negative emotions, they don’t tell people to be strong or “celebrate their child’s life,” because these parents have every right to their grief and anger
and the lost children are never forgotten. flowers appear on graves during birthdays and anniversaries, heroes find pictures of those kids and they carefully take them down and ensure they’re delivered to the villain’s cell, and a few villains can be seen with friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists the cops have learned not to try and take them off
This is all soooo good, but I wonder what effect this has on the villains. Like, can they really wreak indiscriminate havoc when they know the kids that worship them might be in the area? Like, what if they attack a shopping mall and it just so happens that Annie’s mom ran in for a pair of shoes or something? What then?
So what you’re saying is that there is now an organization of henchmen who do round the clock, exhaustive research in order to make sure the villain’s plan isn’t going to ruin the life of some kid. Just imagine some aunt getting a call from an unlisted number.
“I swear I am not a bill collector ma’am. It’s just. Well. Ok and I swear I am not a stalker even if this is actually going to be a very creepy phone call, but you said you were going to the mall at four? Is it possible you could reschedule or postpone that trip for about an hour? That mall is way too close to…well. It just wouldn’t be safe. I could wire you some money, and you could go to the much nicer mall one town over? Would that work for you? No? You are calling the police? Yes. Yes that is the sensible thing to do. Definitely do that. You have a nice day, ma’am. Tell Marcus Doctor Evil says hello and to have a nice day.”
And then the poor minion has to call the villain and explain why robbing X bank isn’t a good idea that day.
“Yes. Hello. Sir? Oh good I caught you before you left the base. Look, Marcus Smithson’s aunt is going to be near the blast radius for that job you have scheduled so-yes. Yes I am aware that rescheduling is going to be a lot of work since most everything is already set up, but….but, sir think about poor Marcus! She’s his favorite aunt, and the woman refused to ‘reorder her life around some crazy mastermind’. ……no…..no, please do not kidnap the aunt, sir. It’s terribly rude. Yes I realize you weren’t going to keep her or doing anything other than drop her off at an alternative location, but, well, citizens frown upon that sort of thing and….yes….Yes, of course. You have a good day, too, sir.”
And they turn to their coworker and are just like “So if I don’t come in to work tomorrow it’s because Doctor Evil threw me in his dungeon and/or sent his hellhounds to maul me. Please remember to send help.”
Oooooh yes.
But but but… what happens when one falls through the cracks? When Lord Dominion or whatever does a typical baddie thing but then Penny’s new best friend gets caught up in the damage and Lord D didn’t even KNOW Penny had a new bestie so how was he to know but now the kid is devastated and it’s all his fault? I mean, how does that even shake out?
Penny SWEARS REVENGE! Lord D is distraught but also somewhat proud. He sends Penny a very sincere apology and also a bunch of tips on how to execute a proper vengeance plot, in case she decides not to accept the apology. He sends henchmen to spy on her, and he keeps the surveillance photos of her sitting in her room, plans and schematics strewn all over her desk. He puts them in his wallet and brags to all his villain friends that one of his kids is taking up scheming, look at her go, she’s already started on pattern analysis of his latest heists. He’s so proud. Later this month he’ll show up on her way home from school so she can have her first Confrontation.
omg yes. Yes to all of that. There will inevitably be mistakes and tragedies.
Penny is an intelligent kid. She catches on to the spying henchmen pretty quick and bribes some of them to her side with snacks. That first confrontation does not go like Lord Dominion expected because Penny has minions (minions that are using his OWN WEAPONS against him, even)
Lord Dominion is the proudest villain ever, even if he did almost lose an ear thanks to the impeccable aim of a nine year old with a grudge. He does let the laser blast graze him just so he can have a scar to show people because that girl is a villain after his own heart.
He doesn’t want to ask his villain rivals to help her out because that would imply he doesn’t think she’s capable of eventually growing strong enough to kick his ass. Turns out Penny already thought of that and has mailed letters asking for advice to Lady Sinister, Lord Dominion’s long time, mostly friendly rival. (She mailed a letter to Lord D’s arch nemesis, but man. Heroes are always trying to make you do The Right Thing. Penny doesn’t have time for the high road. Plus, the low road has lasers.)
Lady Sinister thinks Penny is the best thing ever and while she has mostly stopped kicking Lord D’s ass, she still breaks into his hideout to sit in his favorite chair with a glass of wine and brags about her new favorite up and coming villainess. (She doesn’t warn Lord D about the attack rabbits she agreed to train for Penny as a favor, and for obvious reasons, she is going to be a bystander at the next confrontation, filming everything on her phone to post the dark web so all their villain friends can see this)
“You can’t have a character with big boobs and not sexualise them”
“There aren’t any feminist female characters that want to do things that are typically feminine”
“There aren’t any badass gay characters”
“There aren’t any cool/badass disabled characters”
“Okay well what about disabled POC characters?”
“There are no interesting or complex villains! None that ever question their morals, or have an interesting motive”
“There aren’t any women characters that don’t just do things for men”
“I want a poc character that fights against racism”
“There aren’t any cool characters that aren’t young and healthy”
“There are no male characters that like feminine things”
Need I go on? Go watch Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.
Fullmetal alchemist also tackled the issues of imperialism, genocide, PTSD, friendly fire, racism, war brutality, and military corruption unflinchingly. “Most military commanders are killed by their own disgusted soldiers.” indeed.
at this point reading about post-Brexit news is like following the unfolding of a very nasty and painful breakup, where everyone involved is shouting and throwing furniture out of the window. The UK wants to talk about custody and alimony first, but the EU is seething and asking the UK to take all of its stuff and get the fuck out of their house ASAP, Scotland is taking EU’s side and telling England: look, we’ll always be neighbors and friends but you fucked up so we’re moving out, Northern Ireland is thinking to move in with their folks again, the racist aunt who never liked the couple is celebrating by kicking kids out of her yard, the markets are crashing drunk on the sidewalk and losing money like I lose bobby pins, whereas the rest of us, children of divorce from both sides of the Channel, are left weeping, confused, abandoned, wandering toward an uncertain future and thoroughly fucked over by our parents.
it baffles me that theres people who can just… just sit down and take out their homework and be like “time to work yes” and actually…get things done???? without a problem??? and move on?????? thats wild
hello I am here to tell you about Worst Time Traveller Han Solo, possibly post-TFA, grumpily rolling through the Clone Wars and accidentally earning a Reputation for knowing, strangely, exactly where to invest his money and what to do when confronted with Completely Unexpected Events. also, for some reason, he keeps running into baby-Vader a lot. STOP SHOOTING AT ME, yells Anakin, possibly just before they find themselves in another hot mess. sorry, force of habit, says Han.
also, at least once, somebody’s like “ok dude you’re a bit TOO accurate with your blaster shots as Anakin keeps complaining, lemme take your midichlorian count” “midi WHAT NOW” “I mean, you’re clearly Force-sensitive” “NO I’M NOT IT’S LUCK.”
“it would be impossible for this disabled character to be played by a disabled actor because of the things this character can do in this movie” well then maybe…… you fucked up in the writing of this disabled character……
also cgi exists. if you need your disabled character to walk for a couple of scenes use a body double and green screen. this can also be used for trans characters prior to transition.
if it’s possible to make chris evans look 5ft nothing and skinnier than a maypole then it’s possible to cast disabled actors for disabled characters
As the kid of a doctor and a biologist, let me tell you something that just miiight go over some people’s (*cough cough terfs*) heads:
- XX and XY (or any other combinations - there are others) chromosomes are a thing and are medically important
- genitals are a thing and are medically important
- horomones are a thing and are medically important
- the idea of a “biological sex” is still completely unnecessary. If you have XX chromosomes, you can tell your doctor that. If you have a penis, you can tell your doctor that. If you have high levels of both estrogen/testosterone, your doctor should probably know that already but I guess if you go to a new one you can tell them that. There is no situation in which one has to say “I am biologically male/female”
^say it a little louder for the transphobic educators who tried to tell students otherwise
I teach intro biology labs at the college level, and I try really hard to get all of this through my students’ heads at the earliest possible opportunity. The biological definition of a sex is l i t e r a l l y just:
Does this organism produce: many tiny energetically cheap gametes, or few large energetically expensive gametes?
That’s literally it. There’s no other qualifiers, there’s no other anatomical characteristics involved in that definition, and even that scientific distinction exists on a spectrum! No species of animal ever 100% across-the-board conforms to this sexually dimorphic biological system! There will always be individuals of any largely gametically-dimorphic species that exist somewhere in-between, and there are a number species where the sexes all produce gametes of similar sizes!
IN NO WAY EVER does even that gamete size distinction ever confer gender upon anyone. Chromosomes and genitals and hormones ARE medically important, but these characteristics NEVER dictate gender, and they’re NEVER anyone’s business but your own unless you choose to involve another person in discussions of your strictly physical health.
There is no such thing as being “biologically [gender]”. The idea is a toxic social construct, and don’t let anyone try to shoehorn you into believing otherwise.
hello I am here to tell you about Worst Time Traveller Han Solo, possibly post-TFA, grumpily rolling through the Clone Wars and accidentally earning a Reputation for knowing, strangely, exactly where to invest his money and what to do when confronted with Completely Unexpected Events. also, for some reason, he keeps running into baby-Vader a lot. STOP SHOOTING AT ME, yells Anakin, possibly just before they find themselves in another hot mess. sorry, force of habit, says Han.
also, at least once, somebody’s like “ok dude you’re a bit TOO accurate with your blaster shots as Anakin keeps complaining, lemme take your midichlorian count” “midi WHAT NOW” “I mean, you’re clearly Force-sensitive” “NO I’M NOT IT’S LUCK.”
for the three-sentence AU meme, not that I personally consider this an AU: Steve Rogers being IN SPACE and not knowing wtf is going on down on earth, go.
All right, did you mean ‘Star Trek mashup,’ because I refuse
to dignify Dick Spencer with even the slightest iota of my attention and I LOVE
STAR TREK. Um, there’s definitely gonna
be more than three sentences, I tried but I got overexcited, sorry. THERE’S A READMORE, THAT’S HOW OUT OF HAND THIS GOT.
Starbase
616 is approximately five days at max warp past the generally accepted
middle-of-nowhere, the kind of place they send you when you’ve slept with a
higher-up’s spouse (or spouses, Security Officer Kellan will say mournfully,
not that he knew it at the time) or after you’ve blown up a very expensive
piece of equipment (Chief of Engineering Maxime Rochert is only allowed near
the engines with supervision, is the running joke). So when the ship drifts in, Starbase 616 has
a hot second of panic, because they have never
gotten a ship since the last troop of poor suckers was released from this
purgatory. It’s even worse because the USS Avenge left its last leg about a parsec
back and seems to have crawled in on some kind of souped-up impulse engine none
of them have seen before. It’s even worse because, once they get on
board to check why they’re not receiving a response to their thirty-one hails,
they find:
an
AI that apparently fried itself and shut down all non-life support or non-propulsion
systems,
a
piloting and navigation console that looks like it’s been ripped apart and
hotwired together,
and
almost a dozen (sort of living) legends in deep cryostasis in the medical bay,
with no other signs of life.
i can’t believe i still have to unfollow people for putting terfs on my dash.
“don’t reblog terfs” is not an attempt at a political gotcha, it is an urgent matter of safety for trans people esp. trans girls. a terf is a transphobe and transmisogynist being legitimized as a feminist - this means that any trans person seeking out feminist resources can be suddenly hit with abusive, violent rhetoric. terfs do not have a mere disagreement with trans women, they hate us and constantly throw verbal abuse & harassment in order to suicide bait.
it is absolutely a responsibility to not legitimize their voices.
nothing a terf has to say is worth the total disregard for our lives a snippy reblog signifies. this isn’t hard and there’s no fucking excuse.
if I ever reblog someone you know to be a TERF A) rest assured it was not intentional and B) pls let me know right away so that I can remove that filth from my blog
A common fat-phobic belief is that fat people are fat because they overeat. A recent submission to @facebooksexism perfectly illustrates this stereotype and the harmful classist attitudes it perpetuates:
Like most fat-phobic beliefs, this stereotype is completely wrong.
It is well accepted in public health science that food insecurity – which is the lack of consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living – predicts higher body weight.
Limited resources and lack of access to nutritious, affordable foods. Heavily processed, low-nutrition foods are usually cheaper, but are more calorie dense and less satisfying to eat.
Cycles of food deprivation and overeating. Low income people often run out of money for necessities like food before their next paycheck arrives, resulting in extended periods of hunger and starvation followed by periods of compensatory eating when the paycheck arrives. Such eating patterns cause weight gain over time.
High levels of stress, anxiety, & depression, all of which cause physiological changes resulting in weight gain over time.
Limited access to health care. Many chronic health conditions, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, thyroid dysfunction, and type II diabetes, cause weight gain when left untreated.
All of this means that systematic oppression causes people to be fat for reasons that are outside of their personal control, and that poor fat people are not lying when they report that they cannot afford to put food on the table. Stop spreading the harmful, oppressive, and fat-phobic belief that you can
judge a person’s nutrition or eating habits by the size of their body.
- Mod D
READ THIS.
Also, as a reminder, the reason that cycles of deprivation and overeating affect the body so much is because we evolved to survive those cycles. When someone goes through a period of deprivation, we have millions of years of evolution that go “OH SHIT WE COULD STARVE BETTER HANG ONTO THOSE CALORIES.” Hence weight gain.
In “How to SURVIVE the Hunger Games pt. 1,” MatPat points out that one of the best way to survive is to put on as much weight as possible–five pounds of fat is 17,500 calories, or enough calories to survive for 8.5 days with no food whatsoever. That’s the point of fat, after all, to have enough energy to live in periods of low- or no food.
Having to go through cycles of deprivation sets the body into survival mode. 10,000 years ago, having extra fat meant the literal difference between life and death when there simply was no food available. If I don’t have access to sufficient nutrition, my body automatically hangs on to every calorie available and turns it into fat. because it knows that there will be a time when I need that fat to survive. It doesn’t matter if it makes me look “ugly” or “unappealing” because my survival doesn’t hinge on me being pretty, it hinges on me being able to continue living.
While we don’t live in the exact same conditions–here in America, there is food, even if I can’t access it–we simply haven’t had enough time to evolve to change how the body responds to scarcity.
So saying that someone who lives in a constant state of food insecurity is lying because they’re fat? It’s a profoundly stupid, uninformed thing to think. If you want to worry about obesity, the best way to do it is guarantee that everyone–and I mean EVERYONE–has access to nutritious food. Not ramen, not cheap, shitty, high-calorie low-nutritious food, but good food.
(I live in the fucking future, in one of the richest countries in the world, and yet there are people who don’t have enough to eat. I cannot begin to tell you how infuriating this is to me.)
Access to healthier foods at a low cost would not solve the problem at hand without proper education, though. And there are plenty of nutritious foods that are at very low cost that most people who are worried about getting food on the table should be buying instead of the cheap, but unhealthy options.
Do you honestly think that if the solution to food insecurity was as simple as just buying rice and beans, that anyone would still be starving in the US or Canada? Do you really believe that poor parents are just choosing to let their children go hungry because they are too ignorant and uneducated to know better? Honestly, a person must hold some pretty prejudiced and condescending beliefs about poor people to justify this type of comment.
For the record: Poor people do not need “education” from wealthy people who have never experienced true food insecurity concerning the best ways to live and eat. Poor people are not poor and lacking food because they are ignorant, or uneducated, or lazy. Yes, even poor fat people! Poor people suffer from food insecurity because they experience legitimate social, economic, and physical barriers to accessing adequate food to survive. Period.
Poor people need to be able to earn a real living wage (or be provided with more than the most basic bare minimums to support both good physical AND mental health – for their own version of healthy – by social welfare programs such as disability, retirement, and SNAP benefits.
We need to not have to balance two or more jobs and sometimes school just to scrape by and be so exhausted from physical and emotional labor required by their shitty jobs where they are overworked and undervalued that leave them unable to cook the nutritious food they want to eat.
We need to be treated like competent human beings because we ARE.
We need rich (or even who are well into “comfortable” range) people to shut the entire hell up about deciding what we need to eat and whether or not poor drug users even qualify as human enough to justify being able to eat.
We need a healthcare system that isn’t dizzying in its ineptitude. After nearly four years of Medicaid not paying for what Medicare didn’t cover I finally got frustrated enough to seek help from a legal aid society. It should not be necessary to HIRE A LAWYER – even one who works pro bono – to get bills paid. I tried four years on my own and I am an intelligent, educated person. I can’t even imagine how people with developmental and learning disabilities and/or the elderly handle this if they do not have a strong support system.
We need to remind you that we ALSO pay taxes that find these programs. We get taxed at a higher percentage, and we earn dramatically less money.
The assumption that there are are plenty of cheap nutritious foods available for everyone omits a serious problem that many American face: food deserts. According to the American Nutrition Association, food deserts are “parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.This has become a big problem because while food deserts are often short on whole food providers, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, instead, they are heavy on local quickie marts that provide a wealth of processed, sugar, and fat laden foods[.]”
How common are food deserts in America? Take a look:
Those are a LOT of places where Americans, especially poor Americans, don’t have access to whole foods, especially fresh fruits and veggies. You can’t buy what isn’t available in your local grocery.
And you also can’t buy what you can’t afford. Costs are relative. What is cheap to someone who is upper middle class or wealthy may be too costly for someone struggling to make ends meet–and anyone on SNAP has to meet income and resource tests.
Nor does SNAP automatically pay for everything in the grocery cart. A single person could get, at most, $194 per month. That’s just for food items (hand soap, sanitary napkins, toilet paper, etc., are not covered and must be paid for by the person). Assuming that the SNAP recipient goes shopping once a week, that would permit them to spend $48.50 SNAP credit on food each week in a four-week month. In a long month that contains half a week or so at the end, the food budget might drop to $38.80 SNAP credits per week.
That’s not much money to pay for an entire week’s worth of groceries. And allotments go down as numbers of people per household increase. Two people in a household would get $357 per month ($89.25 per week in a four-week month, or $44.62 for one and $44.63 for the other; $71.40 per week in a five-week month, or $35.70 for each person).
And $194 per month for one person (or $357 for two people) is the MAXIMUM.
Most recipients won’t get nearly that much.
So yes. I can well believe that Sharon’s monthly SNAP benefits do not allow her to purchase much food. It’s simple mathematics.
All of this, plus a note that most medical measures of fatness are standardized around abled upperclass cis white men and are far less accurate estimates of body fat, even on broad scale, for women and people of color. Physically disabled people and trans people are typically not looked at in general when these measures are constructed, instead they are standardized around abled cis men. Poor people also tend to be shorter, which measures like BMI penalize.
The demographics of poor people are different than those of wealthy people.
BMI was directly created as a eugenicist ideal and the fact that it stigmatizes women, poor people, and people of color as deviants more is a feature, not a bug.
That combination of stigmatizing fat people and using a measure designed to call poor people, women, and people of color fatter is absolutely also about policing and medicalizing the bodies of the poor, women, trans people, people of color, and disabled people.
^^ This is some spot-on analysis right here. Thank you, I agree with everything you say.
I WANT GAY ROMANTIC COMEDIES GOD DAMN IT I AM SO TIRED OF THE ONLY GAY MOVIES BEING DRAMATICALLY SAD BECAUSE THEYRE GAY AND SOMEONE HAS AIDS OR SOMEONES A COWBOY OR SOMEONE DIES GIVE ME YOU’VE GOT MAIL WITH TWO WOMEN GIVE ME SIXTEEN CANDLES WITH TWO BOYS GIVE ME SOMETHING
President Obama offered to pay for Vice President Biden’s son’s cancer
treatment after finding out Biden was considering selling his house to
pay for it. That’s really kind but… holy shit. If the *Vice President*
has to *sell his house* to pay for healthcare, what chance do regular
Americans have? How is anyone still alive in that country?? Australia,
do not do anything to creep in the direction of America’s healthcare
system. Keep Medicare free. Including frikking pap smears.
Important questions in no particular order: what is the Foxhole Court, do I need to give a shit about sports in order to enjoy it, are there LGBT characters/relationships, and in the event that I cave, should I just buy all the books in one fell swoop?
honestly I love angst but I need it to have a happy ending
there are actually basically two reasons for this:
1. Strictly-fictional catharsis. I like characters in bad situations because I like to see them overcome those situations.
2. There are plenty of situations in reality that can’t or don’t have happy endings, or even endings that could qualify as bittersweet. But in stories? Heck yeah, the characters can find happiness after struggling. So a more real, personal sort of catharsis from that end.
‘well you know in real life the good guys don’t always win’ like bitch please i don’t gotta rely on YOUR depressing ass to learn me this important lesson i fucking KNOW now take those boys and let them kiss
A majority of millennial men failed to see women as equals, according to the study, which looked at how college biology students viewed their classmates’ intelligence and achievements, the Harvard Business Review reported.
Among the findings:
In every biology class surveyed, a man was seen as the most celebrated student, even in instances where women earned significantly better grades.
Men were also found to overestimate the intelligence of their male classmates over that of female ones.
Men continued exaggerating their assessments of the male peers, despite unequivocal evidence that their female peers were performing better.
Women, conversely, weren’t found to display a bias: Their assessments of fellow classmates tended to be spot-on.
The National Institutes of Health researchers pointed out that female STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors drop out at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts.
“The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom,” they wrote.
Still, scores of men are under the impression that they’ve become the target of reverse sexism. Conservative columnist John Hawkins ranted in Town Hall last year:
“Men have it rougher in America than most people realize. In part, that’s because they’re one of the few groups (along with white people, conservatives, and Christians) it’s cool to crap on at every opportunity. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a nonstop assault on masculinity in America.”
But research has confirmed the reality of gender bias against women. A staggering 90 percent of women reported experiencing gender harassment in the workplace, a 2010 University of Michigan study found. The results suggest that such harassment had the purpose of driving women out of jobs and not the generally assumed motivation of trying to draw women into relationships.
“One could argue that, in these instances, ‘sexual harassment is used both to police and discipline the gender outlaw: the woman who dares to do a man’s job is made to pay,’” the researchers wrote, quoting an article by Katherine M. Franke, an associate professor of law at the University of Arizona College of Law.
As for millennial men specifically, they have been less accepting of female leaders than their older male counterparts, according to a 2014 survey of more than 2,000 adults residing in the United States, the Harvard Business Review reports.
Half of Millenial men said their careers would take priority over their partners’.
Three-fourths of women, on the other hand, said their careers would be at least as important as their husbands’.
oh look its the shit women have been saying all the damn time and antifeminists stamp their feet and cry about
“Later on in the former interview, on the topic of the backlash, Alonso said, “We’re trained to anticipate a strong reaction to change or a big plot twist like this, whether it’s a female Thor or the new Ms. Marvel or the Korean-American Hulk. We didn’t expect the reaction to be anywhere this big.” To compare these incidents of backlash completely misunderstands the issue.”
*appears to harass you again* Okay but for real, talk to me about the disaster that unfolds as Anakin has to deal with Padme's insistence that no one OWNS him, because he's a PERSON, not a thing, and also how that turns into handmaiden!Anakin, and also whether this eventually turns into Padme/Anakin, and also whether this still ends with Vader or if Anakin loses it completely and they have an untrained Dark Side nine-year-old. I swear I'll get out of your inbox someday, but clearly not today.
(I’ll be honest there’s a lot here so I just wrote The Next Thing That Happens, lolll. hopefully it satisfies?)
Anakin cries for a very long time, surprising Padmé exactly not at all. She guides him a little further away from the funeral stragglers and does her best to disappear him behind her robes in the shadows, suspecting that later he might be ashamed to know the Jedi had seen him do it, even if he’ll never see them again. Perhaps some part of her just wants the excuse to disappear him, but that doesn’t make her wrong either.
It doesn’t hurt to get him to sit down somewhere, either. He looks so exhausted.
So Padmé takes a seat, and she lets Anakin lean in against her side and weep silent tears into her chest. She does not reflect on why a nine year-old might cry hard enough to shake without making a sound. Her fists curl inside her sleeves, though, and she makes no effort to disturb his grief.
Anakin cries and cries and cries, and Padmé lays a hand on his back and watches the embers of Qui-Gon Jinn gutter out into nothing. Even with as long as the pyre has burned already, it takes a very long time.
She is so very tired, and there is so very much to do.
“Your majesty,” Sabé murmurs sometime later; Padmé blinks, slowly, and looks up at her. The gesture feels thicker than it should, padded by exhaustion and borrowed pain and a tinge of grief.
“Sabé,” she says, the name coming out slow too. Sabé and Rabé stand side-by-side in front of her, as close to mirrors as any two humans could be. Padmé wants to say more, but the right words won’t come. Words don’t seem to want to come at all, in all honesty.
“Anakin Skywalker is asleep, your majesty,” Sabé says; Padmé glances down automatically and finds that she speaks the truth, although she had not doubted it anyway. “Shall we take him to the Jedi’s rooms?”
“No. He is not a Jedi,” Padmé says, her fingers flattening against Anakin’s back. “He is one of the Naboo. He will stay with us, until such a time as he chooses not to.”
Sabé looks at Rabé, who looks back at Sabé. Padmé looks at neither of them, because Anakin is small and soft and sleeping against her side, body half-hidden by the heavy length of her sleeve but tear-stains still visible on his face.
“We will prepare a room for him, your majesty,” Sabé says, she and Rabé both inclining their heads in perfect unison.
“If you would, please,” Padmé murmurs, and lifts her arm a little higher to better hide Anakin. He shifts in his sleep and lays heavier against her side. She wishes, again, to disappear him–make him unremarkable, unnoticeable, uninteresting. As if she could take his Force strength and his grief and uncertainty off him as easily as she herself takes off Amidala and vanishes into a handmaiden’s cloak.
Of course, even when she takes Amidala off, she is always still Amidala, and Anakin would be no less Anakin if she could do the same for him.
Still. It’s nice, sometimes, to not always be looked at as though she is.
And even without everything he’s done for her people and planet, Anakin is someone who looks at her the same way no matter what she’s wearing. Padmé meant it when she told him he was valuable, and not just in the inherent way that any sentient is, not just for what he’s done–Anakin is valuable to her, for how he treats her. It’s one of the few truly selfish things Padmé has allowed herself to feel since being elected, and she has no intention of changing it.
Honestly, Anakin might need more people to be selfish about himself. Especially now, with Qui-Gon Jinn dead. Who else does he have, now that he’s left his home?
Her.
He will have her.
The rest of it … the rest of it they’ll just have to see, she supposes.
So apparently at one point during the American Revolution Alexander Hamilton, Lee and a bunch of troops were all across the Hudson River from the rest of the army, and Hamilton and a few other men were destroying bags of flour so the British wouldn’t get to them (since the British were supposed to arrive soon) and anyway the troops saw the British coming and began to retreat by marching off, but Hamilton and the other few men were left by the shore of the river with a heck of a lot of redcoats approaching. Luckily they had a boat and fled back across the river (under British gunfire), but one man died, another was wounded, and they all bailed and began to swim but made it out ok. However, Lee assumed Hamilton was dead and reported thus to Washington and his aides, and they were apparently all mourning him and drinking to his memory when he appeared in the doorway, dripping wet.
omg when ladies talk about their wives and just say “my wife” I just get so excited and happy because it is all possible and real. it’s so amazing and beautiful
DUDE my teacher canceled class the other day and so the next day we were all like oh no is everything ok?? and shes like “oh yeah its fine its just my wife wasn’t feeling good so i took her home, made her some soup, yknow fun stuff” and i swear everyone in class froze for a sec cuz we never knew she was a lesbian but then we spent a good 30 min of class time discussing whether her wife actually ate the soup cuz we all know she sucks at cooking
that is the best thing I’ve heard all day omg
this is beautiful
I had a professor who would talk in class about her wife and their four daughters and it always made me go !!! inside. like, wooooow, family goals.
In my undergrad, I took a module that had two lecturers teaching it. The first was very butch and would occasionally talk about how brilliant her wife was in the field and would talk about her kids and general family life. Then the other lecturer took over classes, and she would talk about her wife too, and how brilliant her wife was academically. Then they taught a class together and the penny dropped. They were talking about each other and both thought the other was the literal shit in their area of media.
It’s been delightful for me to watch my friends finally able to get legally married. Every time @crofethr says “my wife” it’s like a chorus of bluejays dance around behind her.
I was at work at a deli a few weeks ago and this group of three women came in pretty late at night. One was the mother of one of them, and the other two were just being really cute and holding hands and cuddling and whatnot. One was leaning on the other and she seemed really tired, so her wife ordered for her and the mom was like, “Married for seven years, they know each others’ orders by heart” and I honestly felt like I’d been blessed
oh my god that’s beautiful
one time a lecturer was discussing all the stupid reasons she’s been called up in front of the board (which include an actual formal accusation of witchcraft) and once a student accused her of homophobia and homophobic statements and she walked into the formal board hearing with her only prepared defense being “remember how I’m married to another woman ok thanks let’s go get lunch”
dchxhgsfahKasggzjz oh my god
I’m an optician and one day I had 2 women, one blonde and one brunette, come in to pick up glasses. I had the blonde try on hers while the brunette was talking to one of my coworkers. When she put them on I said, “Oh looks like they’re not sitting straight.” Without missing a beat she said “Oh honey, nothing about me is straight,” and proceeded to pat her wife on the butt and say “Honey, did you hear what I said? It was really funny. Honey? Honey, I said nothing about me is straight.”
Those people who constantly reblog your stuff but you never really talk:
I do notice my regulars. You guys are the best.
“Regulars” makes me feel like a bar-tender…
Wiping down my dash at the end of an evening, I see your read-more, over-hear your rant in the tags, so I pour you a drink.
“…what’s troubling you, kid?”
It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday As the regular crowd tumbls by There’s an old fandom queen blogging next to me And her little gray tags catch my eye
She says tumblr I’m feeling like shit today can you send me some posts for a smile can we talk about slash, can you fill up my dash so I won’t have to think for a while
Laa dahdah didee dah La dahdah didee dah dadum
Fill up my dash, you’re my followers Fill it with pictures and fic Yeah we’re all in the mood for some memery And occasional pictures of dick
Now Jill is a centaur novelist And she writes of her girlfriend and wife She reblogs from Toni, who’s in My Little Pony, And probably will be for life.
As the staff implements wretched changes And we think of how aliens bone We are writing a lot about loneliess: It’s much better than writing alone.
No shit reaaallyyyy wow I would NEVER have guessed *cough cough* *intense sarcasm*
And so all Spencer’s talk of ‘no this is really Steve Rogers, it’s not brainwashing or a trick, is BULLSHIT. They purposefully enraged fans to sell their cheap trashy book. Now I have to wait even longer before I can buy a Cap comic, or hell, start making my own.
As you walk along the Thames pondering what Brexit will mean for you and your family, a soaking wet woman walks up a set of stairs from the river, hands you a package and tells you “Sort it out, please!” before vanishing around a corner. You open the package to find Excalibur.
Look at me. Look me in the eye. On November the 8th, 2016, one of two things will happen: Hillary Clinton will become president, or Donald Trump will become president. These are the only two possibilities. The superdelegates aren’t going to switch. An indictment isn’t coming. There is no third possibility. There is no space between the spaces where you can hide. Every vote for Donald Trump requires two Hilary Clinton votes to overcome. A Hillary Clinton vote can only be overcome by two Donald Trump votes. If you stay home, a Donald Trump vote doubles its power. This is the real, actual reality of the situation. There is not one other option.
And there’s no ctrl-alt-del for the election. Read up on 2000 if you doubt this.
And to those of us who supported Bernie, he WANTS you to vote for Hillary. If you believe in him and his mission you will follow his advice. He knows that writing his name in, or voting for anyone else besides Clinton, is effectively voting for Trump.
Clinton will be an effective leader. She had experience and will be able to pass at least slightly liberal legislation with pragmatism. Is she the ideal? No, I am still convinced she has no truly held beliefs. But she is sure better than the alternative.
The only way I’ll accept the hydracap story line to play out is:
Steve’s busy being a nazi when Bucky goes to check on him and bucky’s like “wtf the fuck”
So he’s like “steve no” and steve’s like “steve yes” and Bucky’s like “that’s only funny when you’re a good guy doing reckless things and not a NAZI doing NAZI THINGS” and steve’s like “(ง'̀-‘́)ง” because he’s a dick now
but Bucky can win this
because Bucky’s got a secret weapon
an assassin you know and love who’s unafraid to step in
he’s constantly confusing, confounding the marvel henchmen
EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR AMERICA’S FAVOURITE FIGHTING TRASH CAN
Deadpool
so he goes to deadpool like “you know that thing you do where you break the fourth wall or w/e” and deadpool’s like “yeah?”
“can i use it for a bit?”
so they go off and fight the marvel writers (with swords) and then destroy the new issues (with fire) and then they go to see steve and steve hugs them all and he’s crying and thanking them for saving his characterisation
and then they go out for ice cream or something
Okay this is all A+ but I’m reblogging for AMERICAS FAVORITE FIGHTING TRASH CAN
This is it. This is literally the ONLY way I would ever accept this.
