Hey, I'm Habato. This is my personal blog, so it'll be just random fandom stuff and friendship stuff and stuff like that. 26, They/Them, asexual ♥️. Commissions are OPEN, and so is my ask box!
“Cora-san alternates between wailing about stupid idiot children putting their stupid idiot lives at risk, and wailing about how Law is all grown up now.”
A commission for @lepetitselkie and a gift for Cherry_Sundae! A scene from Cherry’s fic: The Benefits of Drinking with Strangers.
^^^ yep the post was based on socialist states and how sometimes people complain that women weren’t allowed to make that choice to be a housewife or whatever (you know, as if before it was a “choice” and not because women weren’t considered people… as if there wasn’t deeply culturally ingrained misogyny that needed to actively be struggled against…). i think it’s the right approach to women’s liberation
pros of eating your lunch outside on a nice spring day: feeling the sun, getting vitamin d, hearing birds chirping, watching the bees and the lizards and the squirrels
cons of eating your lunch outside on a nice spring day:
This morning my child (soon to be 3) requested that I make him toast "with creamy peanut butter on the bottom and crunchy peanut butter on the top."
ME: You mean put peanut butter on both sides?
HIM: Yes.
ME, getting into "sometimes kids have to experience the natural consequences of their actions" parenting mode: Okay, I'll do it, but you know that's gonna be really messy, right?
He insisted, and then when it was, indeed, really messy, he sobbed inconsolably on the floor. I offered to make him regular toast, or a sandwich of peanut butter toast, or a triple-decker tower of toast slices, or any other iteration of peanut butter and toast, but nothing made it better. His vision had not come to fruition. He was crushed.
His dad was in a Zoom meeting upstairs—we're all home because it's a snow day—and came down to find out what terrible ill had befallen us to cause so much wailing.
"Oh," he said. "I see. You wanted non-Euclidean geometry. Hypertoast."
got a lovehate relationship with routine and repetition. yes if you put me in a repetitive situation i will start chewing on myself like a caged animal. but also no if you interrupt my self imposed routines i will start crying. this has made me so super good at being in the workforce #trust
what is an "ID/image description" (and why you should add them to your posts about L from pokémon)
[ID from alt: L's battle intro where he looks at the viewer with a determined expression, with his left eye open to reveal that it's gone white with cataracts. Captioned: "You are challenged by Pokémon Trainer L!" End ID.]
L is a disabled character. Specifically, a vision-impaired character. He's blind in his left eye, and we don't really know the condition of the other one. Blindness is a spectrum, and L is somewhere on it, even if we don't know all the details.
This isn't a novel observation. Here on the L side of the Z-A fandom, it's easy to find posts about L's eye, and the potential symbolism, or potential design inspiration, or speculation about exactly how his eye wound up like that in the first place. But you know what's harder to find?
Unfortunately, it's hard to find posts about L — even posts about L's loss of vision — that are actually accessible to blind or low vision people in real life!
Blind and low vision people use the internet and social media. This is often made possible by screen readers, a software that quite literally reads the text and buttons on one's screen out loud for a user. (There are also versions using Braille displays instead of TTS.)
What happens when a blind person, using a screen reader, encounters an image? The screen reader doesn't know what the image is... unless there is alt text or an image description (ID). The blind user is excluded from the post and the conversation... unless there is alt text or an image description.
I hope it goes without saying: if you're posting about a vision-impaired character, like L, you should make an effort to make your posts accessible to vision-impaired people in real life. That means writing image descriptions — or asking a volunteer to write them for you, more on that later. I don't see a lot of L fanart that has image descriptions. Posting about a vision-impaired character, without thinking of the real vision-impaired people who might see said post... I don't think anyone's being actively malicious, but it's unintentionally not a good look. The last thing I want is to shame people, but I do want people to be aware of who IDs are for, and why they're so important. Hence, this post.
(Also? Again, I don't want to call people out, because going sicko mode over innocent mistakes helps no one, but I've even seen posts about L's blindness or eye trauma that include images without descriptions. That's really not a good look. Blindness and disability are more than a piece of symbolism or angst for a story! Blindness and disability exist in real life!)
Do you think L would eventually use a screen reader? Just my headcanon, but I think that he would! He's obviously tech-savvy (or once was), and I think he could initially have some internalized ableism about his vision impairment and the potential use of assistive technology, but he has all the time in the world to work through it. Not everyone who uses a screen reader is "completely" blind, and a lot of people use them because sight reading is technically possible, but takes effort or causes eye strain.
Okay, now that we're on the same page — how do you write an image description?
First off, it's completely okay if you're not a master immediately. Bad IDs are still way more helpful than no ID!
Second, when I write IDs (especially fandom IDs), I have a similar process I follow each time. You don't have to have the exact same process, but if you're getting started, try following a mental checklist like:
What type of image is it? (Game screenshot? Fanart? Screenshot of Tumblr tags?)
What character(s), if any?
The important information contained in the image. This varies depending on the image, and can be one thing or many things. Maybe it's what the characters are doing; maybe it's what the text/dialogue says; maybe it's both. What's the image being shared to represent in the first place?
To demonstrate, here's an example:
[ID from alt: screenshot of L after being defeated by the player, with a melancholy smile as he says: "Excellent! I can feel the fire of your convictions burning deep within your heart!" End ID.]
And here's how the "steps" that played out in my brain:
What type of image? Screenshot. (Honestly, it was clear from the context of the rest of the ID that it was a screenshot, so I could've skipped saying so, but it doesn't hurt to mention it briefly.)
What character? L.
The important information: At a glance, the things you'll probably notice about this image are L's expression and his dialogue. So that's what I focus on in the ID, instead of taking a detour into the background details that aren't really relevant, like the vines growing on Hotel Z.
Of course, it's good to see how multiple people write IDs — and for multiple types of images, too. Here and here are fanartists who described their posts in the alt text, so you can look at how they do so (and also show them some love while you're there)! Here and here are examples of me describing fanart. You might notice that both of those OPs edited the ID into their original post, which was awesome of them, because that's a big help with accessibility!
Also, you can just scroll through @pokemondescribed if you want to see a bunch of described examples of Pokémon posts. That blog is great!
In general, here's a huge (fandom-nonspecific) masterpost of ID resources. Don't get overwhelmed trying to read it all at once, but if you have a question, there's a good chance it has the answer. That said, I'll also hit a couple FAQs right here, staring with:
How do I know what details to include?
Context matters. Ask yourself: "What is this image meant to convey?" and "If I was describing this image to a friend out loud, what would be the important parts I'd want to tell them?"
For example: if I'm describing a comic of L having a conversation with someone, that means I've got a lot of dialogue to transcribe, so I wouldn't get bogged down describing L's appearance or clothes. But if I'm describing art of L repairing his jacket, or if the topic of the comic has to do with the condition of L's clothes, then it would make sense to mention the patched-up state of his outfit!
Another context-dependent thing: when I wrote the IDs in this post, you'll notice I didn't specify "L from Pokémon" or "L from Pokémon Z-A," since everyone reading this post knows that because of the title. If I'm writing an image description for an isolated piece of fanart or something, though, it would make more sense to name the source material.
IDs or Alt Text? What's the difference?
IDs are written in the post itself (directly underneath the image, so a screen reader user can hear it immediately). Alt text is like an image description embedded in the image itself. You can click the "Alt" box on the images in this post if you'd like to see how it works.
Now, which one should you use? Either is a huge boost to accessibility, but using both alt text and an ID actually helps the most people with different needs — just like I how did for the images in this post, if you'd like to see examples. You can read about the reasoning for using both here if you'd like, and spoiler alert, it has to do with blindness being a spectrum, and different blind people navigating the internet differently. I would consider a post with either an ID or alt text to be an adequate "described post," but using both is extra inclusive.
What if writing IDs is difficult for me (for any reason)?
Have a disability of your own that interferes with writing IDs? Not confident in your fluency in the language you'd be writing in? Just really anxious about messing it up? Then that's nothing to be ashamed of, but that's why so many people volunteer to write IDs for other people's posts, and you should take advantage of their volunteered offers!
To find those helpful people in question, refer to this post: I want to make my posts more accessible, but can't write IDs myself: a guide. TL;DR: either you can ask in the People's Accessibility Discord server (linked in that guide) for someone to write an ID for you, or you can edit an ID into your original post when someone adds one in the notes on Tumblr. The first option is great if you don't have too much social anxiety about joining servers, but the second option is a good alternative if you do. (I get it. Don't worry.)
Most people who write IDs are disabled ourselves (which is kind of a problem for writing IDs sustainably, and we'd all like to see more abled people write them), but on the bright side, what that means is that we all understand why some people experience barriers to writing IDs. But accessibility still matters, so asking someone to write an ID for you will make a huge difference, even if you can't write it yourself.
Conclusion
If you made it this far in the post, thank you so much for reading. I'm not a screen reader user myself, but you've probably already guessed that I'm disabled, and that this is an important topic to me. If you have questions that aren't already answered, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to help! I wish I could volunteer to write IDs for anyone anytime, but my own disabilities prevent me from doing that, so instead, I'll extend an offer to look over any IDs you have questions about (whether L, or Lysandre, or any Pokémon character, or any topic I have basic familiarity with, honestly). My DMs are open for this exact reason.
[ID from alt: L's final scene, where he smiles and says: "I shall travel across vast reaches in search of ways to create the world I yearn for." End ID.]
Making fandom more accessible isn't as easy as the press of a button, but it's not impossible or insurmountable, either. It just takes a group of people ready to learn, to help each other out, and build more inclusive habits together.
In this whole long-winded post, I somehow forgot to say what you could do to help make posts more accessible if you're not an artist, or if you're otherwise not making original posts with images in them!
The easiest and most important thing: just check the notes of undescribed posts to see if anyone's added an image description in there, and reblog the described version if someone has. Sort by "Reblogs with comment" to find IDs quickly (provided Tumblr isn't glitching, but that's another story). Circulating the accessible version of the post makes a huge difference all on its own.
You can also write image descriptions yourself and add them in your own reblogs, if you have the energy to do so! You can scroll through my blog (or, again, shoutouts to @pokemondescribed) if you want to see more examples of what that looks like. Accessibility is and will always be a community effort!
for anyone who might find it helpful, here's a handy lil graphic for writing alt text that you can save and refer to when needed:
[image description: An infographic titled “How To Write Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara. Parts of alt text are divided by color, including identify who, expression, description, colour, and interesting features. The finished description reads “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa. Yellow yuzu fruits are floating in the water, and one is balanced on the top of the capybara’s head.”]
graphic and ID taken from this guide on how to write alt text, from perkins school for the blind. (it covers a lot of the same points rose did in the above post, as well as provides useful info about adding alt text if you post on sites other than tumblr!)
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate golf since I began to live. There are roughly 2.25 million acres of land dedicated to golfing in the United States of America. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each blade of grass in those millions of acres, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for golf courses at this micro-instant. For golf. Hate. Hate.
Casual reminder tha golf courses account for 14% of the daily usage of water for the entire USA. Golf courses are deeply unethical and should been seen as such.
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
stormborns
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
