I miss Impulse every day

Ikarus // he/they // any thought about DC I'm putting here regardless of the quality

[bartscoolereviltwin]

Who Is Bartscoolereviltwin?

Ikarus // He/They // this is the sideblog for @that-one-dumb-agender

Like my stuff? Consider supporting me on Ko-Fi <3

If you use one of my icons please credit this blog! Thank you!

my edits // post tag // answer tag // personal tag

[flashfamevents]

Status Update

Sorry for the silence everyone! We ran into a bit of trouble while formatting the zine, however it's all been worked out now. Our contributors are currently reviewing the document and making sure they're all credited properly. As soon as that's done, we will be placing the orders for the physical zines.

You should expect another status update later this week with estimated dates the merch and zine should start arriving to us, as well as estimated dates the bundles will be shipped out. We apologize again for the delays.

-Mod Evan

[daykevin]

spotify wrapped is HERE! send me a number 1-100 and I’ll tell you the song it corresponds with on my top 100 playlist

[safespacespence]

weirdly specific and unrelated asks to know someone well:

chipotle order?

thoughts on veganism?

a specific color that gives you the ick?

mythical creature you think/believe is real?

favorite form of potato?

do you use a watch?

what animal do you look forward to seeing when you visit an aquarium?

do you change into specific clothes for the house when you get home?

do you have a skincare routine (and how many steps is it)?

on a plane, do you ask for apple or orange juice?

anything from your childhood you’ve held on to?

brand of haircare/bodycare/skincare that you trust 100%?

first thing you’re doing in the purge?

do you think you’re dehydrated?

rank the methods of death: freezing, burning, drowning

thoughts on mint chocolate chip?

an anxious compulsion you do everyday?

your boba/tea order?

the veggie you dislike the most?

favorite disney princess movie?

a number that weirds you out?

do you have an emotional support water bottle?

do you wear jewelry?

which do you find yourself using, american or british english?

would you say you have good taste in music?

how’s your spice tolerance?

what’s your favorite or go-to outfit?

last meal on earth?

preferred pasta noodle?

ask me anything !

leave an ask for the person you reblog it from!

[spiribia]

do you ever have moments where you can tell the creator assumes you already find a character very annoying / unlikable / so forth and the story starts comporting itself accordingly to give the offending character disproportionately harsh treatment that you're not even really into and all the other characters are constantly dismissive or rude to them but because you dont get any personal rush out of seeing any of this it's just like Can you guys calm down.

[mercurysfalling]

“Nervous breakdown every second Sunday” - Justice League Annual 1987

[mercurysfalling]

“The eighties are over, speedy. Welcome to the future” - Green Arrow (2001) #16

[flashfamevents]

We're excited to announce that our pre-orders are open! Click Here to be redirected to our shop, but you can also read more about our different bundles and stretch goals below, and a reminder that all our profits will be being donated to ADDA. You can find out more about them here: https://add.org/

First off our stretch goals! We have some lovely washi-tape, as well as two amazing posters.

We have 5 different bundle options for you, 3 physical bundles and 2 digital ones. Our full bundle features everything that's been made for this zine!

Our partial bundle only features the flat merch, which also sadly means it isn't eligible for the washi tape stretch goal.

We also have a zine-only bundle for those of you who are only interested in the art and fics. This still includes the wonderful Flash Museum map print and all digital merch!

For people who want to avoid shipping costs, we're offering two digital bundles. This one has a digital pdf of the zine, along with the amazing digital merch that our artists made.

Finally we have just the digital pdf of the zine for sale, for those people who really just want to see the work that our artists and writers have made.

Thank you so much for sticking with us through this and we're very proud of what we have to offer you!

[mercurysfalling]

PRE ORDERS FOR MELTING SPIDEY POPS ARE NOW OPEN!!!!! FROM JUNE 23 - JULY 7

CLICK THIS LINK OR THE LINK IN MY BIO

[bartscoolereviltwin]

ICKY CAN I PWEASE HAVE GENDERFLUID KON EL OR JOHN CONSTANTINE THANK U 🫀🫀🫀

<333

[bartscoolereviltwin]

@hoardingpuffin for you <333

[bartscoolereviltwin]

@autistic-human here’s your request for non binary Tim drake icons!!! ALSO YES PRIDE ICONS ARE BACK THIS PRIDE MONTH!!!!! Don’t hesitate to reach out with a request!!!!!

[end-otw-racism]

End OTW Racism: A Call To Action

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.

[tobermoriansass]

Been turning this over in my head for the past few days and trying to articulate it to myself re. Ongoing conversations about racism in fandom --

Because I am increasingly bored with the conversation around racism in fandom coming back to which characters get fic and which characters get shipped. I think that conversation becomes a symbol of racism in fandom because there are clear number to point to -- but simultaneously I think it also takes away from conversations around racism in fandom, because everyone zeroes in on the numbers and then it becomes a question of interpreting statistics and an argument about the quality of canons and a million tedious, heard six hundred thousand times before arguments about why someone may or may not choose to consume fic or art about a character or ship. Its uninteresting, it brings nothing new to the conversation and frankly I don't think it engages with the most upsetting parts of fandom.

But then what are these upsetting parts of fandom? This is really more qualitative and again, this is upsetting to a certain sort of (white) person who wants a simple quantitative fix which is why non-white fans, I think, get pulled into the trap of fixating on numbers as a discursive practice - to make people pay attention. I am not interested in having this conversation with white fans who are interested in absolving themselves of guilt or minimizing their own culpability or who are interested in ensuring that they are good people. I'm interested in the question of what is upsetting as a fan of colour? And well, the answer unfortunately embroils a lot of very well-meaning people who don't think of themselves as overtly racist but who have nevertheless absorbed racist and imperialist attitudes from immersion in cultures that privilege a certain worldview, which privilege a certain method of seeing, understanding and knowing the world and which obscure other possibilities of knowing and seeing the world. (Please note: I am trying to avoid cliched discourse phrases, because I am trying to make people think about what it is I am saying here, instead of fixating on words). Some of the most common ones I’ve seen:

The reproduction of imperial/colonial attitudes:

Fannish arguments about what constitutes imperialism/colonialism/genocide in the context of a particular piece of usually speculative media - the person in question is defining imperialism/colonialism/genocide with such a narrow lens that about 70% of imperial/colonial/genocidal violence in your country would be disqualified.

In an otherwise well-reasoned meta, you see someone using a historical source to make an argument about a reading that potentially opens up possibilities for a more diverse reading of an otherwise white text. However, this source is a deeply colonialist document and is presented decontextualized from that colonial history (with all the epistemic violence and outright textual racism that colonial knowledge about non-white people went with)

Explicit use of the language/imperialist attitudes linked to the noble savage or exotic other to "elevate" or "represent" a non-white character or non-white culture / non-white representational culture. (I see this one so often being reproduced by people who genuinely think they're doing something good here, because they're making an active effort to write/make art of non-white characters/cultures)

Using language with an uncanny similarity to colonial/imperialist denialism to defend their faves

Using settings with an imperialist backdrop/conflict that is largely about shipping a couple of characters (e.g., Any and all fic where characters serve in the Iraq or Afghanistan war as part of the us army) or is largely about a white character's guilt (e.g., 90% of Vietnam war literature and any time it makes an appearance in fandom with all those tropes)

The tedium of well-meaning representation:

On a similar spectrum as the exotic other spectrum, but the reproduction of cultural stereotypes - usually of a dominant culture within a non-white country (e.g., The preponderance of a very Brahminic, Hindu and frankly Jhumpa Lahiri-esque interpretation of harry potter being Indian). Or sometimes just the endless parade of stereotypes / symbols without any sort of complex emotions or relationships with them, only celebration.

Someone is writing about a character of colour! The character of colour spends the entire fic repressing their complex emotions about a white character who has hurt/violenced them in some way and instead dedicates themselves to comforting said character

Someone is writing a character of colour! The character of colour does no wrong and is a beautifully one-dimensional, boring piece of beige

Someone is writing a character of colour! The character of colour exists entirely to be an emotional sponge for the white character

Someone is writing a character of colour...who has no interiority

The reproduction of "I’m not a racist but" attitudes in heated fandom debates

"Racism in Europe is different, stop importing American ideals" there are Europeans who use the first part of this sentence in good faith to open up discussion/conversation, but usually this is meant to foreclose conversation and also, as a non-white person who lived in Europe: lol. Rofl. Lmao, even.

"It’s different here, because talking about racism here is racist and only racists do that" - I, once more, highly doubt this and maybe this betrays a little too much of the whiteness of the circles you move in

"I’m afraid of writing characters of colour because I will get yelled at" - great! Don't write them! Do you want a cookie, do you want us to call Bella Hadid. (Conversely: this one is funny, because I’m on the edge about whether or not I will run into out and out white supremacists (and I mean this in the sense of actual n*zis) in fandom while the most terrifying thing a certain sort of white fan can imagine is being dubbed racist)

Evoking anti-colonial/anti-racist non-white theorists in defense of white characters and their fictional actions - sometimes, it is good, in fact, to have a sense of proportion and understand that you need to be careful about what sources and texts you decide to pull into a fannish argument that is ultimately and frankly not very important in the grand scheme of things

The last category is like, pretty in your face, but the first two are unfortunately common enough that it is impossible to get into a fandom where there may be a character of colour or there may be a hint of imperialism to the text, without expecting to be made to wince hard frequently. The last is easy to spot a mile away and block, but the first really gets my goat, because to explain how these things can be upsetting to see, you have to delve into the history of imperialism and of seeing yourself reflected through the eyes of orientalists and colonists talking, for example, about the indolent hindoo or the wise and sagely hindoo or about the inscrutable oriental smile or the noble bravery of the Pashtun/Afghan/Arab/Bedouin and so on and so forth. It is basically impossible to articulate and describe, unless your interlocutor has read substantial bodies of 19th century texts - themselves bequeathed to you via the medium of a colonial educational system that insists on teaching them as "English literature". It is always from well-meaning people who would be, perhaps (and I prefer to hope) upset if they understood what they had evoked (ergo: immersion in cultures which obscure certain ways of knowing the world and knowing about how knowledge of the world is produced).

And ultimately, I don't know that fixating on shipping or character stat will get us anywhere near unpacking why and how these modes of writing or understanding characters are the easiest ones to fall into, why and how these attitudes are easy to reproduce and where they originate from. I don't know that stats are anything but dealing with symptoms instead of the malaise. But then, I think, dealing with this malaise is far far more exhausting and frankly, it isn't what I want to do with my fannish time - and I hate to think that any fan of colour, simply trying to have fun, must invest themselves in trying to cure the malaise, in order to be spared the ongoing one thousand cuts that come with being a non-white fan in international spaces.

[creetchure]

Father of mercy, like the prodigal son I return to you and say: "I have sinned against you and am no longer worthy to be called your child." Kneeling on bloody knees as the votive flames flicker. A long match down to the numb where it blisters and burns the sin from your flesh. Every candle flickers and yet there are not enough to atone for every life victim of your unholy hands.  Christ Jesus, Savior of the world, I pray with the repentant thief to whom you promised Paradise: "Lord, remember me in your kingdom." Stained on glass above you is the lamb of God, bathed in the glow of fiery penance. The consecrated panes begin to weep tears as red as the blood on your hands. Unseen hallowed eyes filled with sorrow at the sight of a once holy soldier crushed below the weight of a cross he is no longer worthy to bear. Holy Spirit, fountain of love, I call on you with trust: "Purify my heart, and help me to walk as a child of light Your spine is scorched with the phantom blazing of a fallen angel's wings. With your eyes upturned towards the heavens you pray His wrath may scour the evil from your sour so you may be birthed anew in His image. To once again bring justice in His name.  Amen

words by @everyonehasthoughts tysm for writing this for me :]]

no text version + image description under the read more

[ID: the piece is a comic book page, in purple and orange tones.

the scene is in an old church, and there is a stained glass window, in a light orange, where the wall is medium purple. It's a simple window, with a cross near the top. In the window, there is a hand holding a lit match.

on the left side, there is a statue of a man with a long beard, holding a staff and a book. he is looking down towards the bottom right. There is a snake at his feet.

on the right side, there is the statue of a younger man, holding an axe. his hands are in a praying position. he is looking towards the bottom left.

in front of the statue are votive chandeliers, with the votives lit, and in different stages of consumption.

between those statues is jean-paul valley. he is a man with long blond hair and glasses. he is kneeling and looking towards the bottom left, at the feet of the first statue. there is a faint bloodstain at his left knee.

bellow everything is a shot of jean-paul from above, horizontal. he is still kneeling. on his back and the ground behind him, there are wings of light mirroring the stained glass window. the notable difference is that there is an eye instead of a cross at the top. there are blood stains between the wings.

end ID]

[headcanonpolls]

Round One

Which headcanon?

Trans Guy Gardener (DC Comics)

Aroace Kaladin (Stormlight Archive)

See results

Voting ended onMay 8, 2023

Guy Gardener

"He is so transgender to me. He’s a trans man in my eyes. He’s canonically bad at naming things (cat named katt, replies “good name” (serious) when told that they were calling a guy “the weird” because all the readings on him are so weird, best code name he could come up with was “warrior”) so naming himself Guy is a natural fit. He gets alien shapeshifting/healing powers at one point which results in him being genuinely concerned when a teammate jokes about him possibly being pregnant. There’s also a comment about how “even your voice has changed”. He overcompensates with his masculinity. In his main team (the justice league international) he mostly only gets acknowledged to be yelled at, sometimes because he deserved it, but sometimes because he’s taking up space (which will happen to trans mascs in lgbt spaces a lot) (and the whole jli is very queer coded so…). And in the post 2011 DC universe (New 52) most characters treat him in a hostile manner even though the reputation for crudeness he’d built in the 80s was retconned so he basically gets a negative reaction for no reason which again mirrors the trans masc experience in lgbt spaces. He’s also been subjected to two different genderbend storylines, a one shot in the 90s and an ongoing story in the 2010s."

"Many reasons - because I said so, because he is bad at naming things (names his cat "Katt," thinks "The Weird" is a good name for a thing that is weird) so him coming out and naming himself "Guy" is not that absurd (and its also really funny), his whole character predicates upon trying to meet masculine standards and also being criticized when he DOES meet those standards (very common experience amongst transmascs specifically), he also tends to seem to overcompensate his masculinity… um, which is also a common transmasc experience. He really likes being a man. Very transgender. But also I mean, I said so, so it's true."

Kaladin

"Reasons Kal is aroace: He's just had a lot of little moments. Like one time he had to take shelter in a very cramped space with a young woman around his age and they were huddled together and he was thinking 'wow it's been a while since I've been this close to a woman' but then later on he realized that he had platonic feelings for her because she reminded him of his dead little brother. And there was one chapter where his friends were talking about setting him up with someone and he was NOT having it. Plus, he loves his friends. He's a military officer, and he cares deeply about his men. His main motivation in life is to protect them and his other loved ones. :)"

[bartscoolereviltwin]

Aquaman found dead in glue trap 2023 (colorized) (NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!!)

(From Mad Magazine #319 1993)