Basically Brilliant in the Legs

hi yeah i know ive been on this medication for 8 years but i need-- yeah. yeah 3 more months please. I'll call you in 3 months to beg for 3 more months, thanks. Bye. Love you.

my other grounding technique is remembering that the earliest abolitionists & the earliest suffragists had no proof that the world would ever make possible what they fought for and indeed many of them did not live to see it come to pass. and yet they did not succumb to despair so it would be disrespectful to their memory to let it overtake me

Can I speak my truth. I don’t think Brienne is even a little gay. I think she’s a kinsey zero who false positives on everyone’s radar. I think if you dropped brienne into new age 2024 she would get treated as a lesbian in her day to day life but whenever a woman liked her she’d be like. Ummmmmmm I’m really sorry but I don’t. Feel like that. I think she’d give lesbianism the good old college try bc of the direness of her male love life and come down firmly on the side of not attracted to women. I think she is quintessential pnw woman who you think is a slam dunk homerun lesbian based on everything about her who drops the word husband on you. I think she gets clocked on sight and mentions a partner named Jaime which makes people go. Okay. Partner i know that game. Jamie easily the name of a lesbian. Easily. And then she drops the he pronouns and you go. Well. Could still be a weird lesbian. And then Jaime is a business major in a frat with generational wealth. And HE is the kinsey five in the relationship.

I’ve been mesmerized by this. I love all the details each artist put in. I highly recommend watching the full video. It really inspires me to write.

got chased by a skeleton but when they caught me they just gave me a kiss and hug. turns out it was an xoskeleton.

this one's a big hit with the ghosts

"Why didn't the Democrats codify Roe v Wade?"

They didn't have enough votes to bypass the filibuster because of Joe Manchin

"Why didn'-"

The answer is probably Joe Manchin.

"They had 60 votes in-"

For a few months and that entire time was spent wrestling with like 11 Joe Manchins from a bunch of red states in the senate to get health care reform passed.

"What about the Filibuster-"

JOE FUCKING MANCHIN

Why didn't Democrats codify Roe v. Wade when Obama had a fillibuster proof majority in 2009? (Because this is where the talking point originates).

The myth is Obama had one for 2 straight years and failed to deliver, ergo, we cannot trust Democrats to codify Roe.

Well, my sweet, summer children, that is bullshit.

For two glorious years Democrats had full and total control of the House, where bills originate. The lie is that they had the same in the Senate. Because while a bill only needs 50 votes to pass, it needs 60 to be brought to a vote in the event that it will be fillibustered first. (Spoiler alert- it will be.)

In 2009, we had 57 Democratic seats and 2 independent seats that usually reliably caucused with the Dems (Bernie Sanders and that fucking twice-baked potato, Joe Lieberman.)

So 59 seats, 1 shy of the magical 60.

Except the 59 is an illusion. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts has a seizure (he had brain cancer) during the inauguration and never returns to vote. So we're at 58.

Al Franken of Minnesota isn't seated because of a contested election that requires recounting. They are down to 57.

Arlen Specter becomes a Democrat in April, though. So back up to 58.

Robert Byrd gets sick in May 2009- down to 57 again. (He died in June of 2010)

Franken is finally seated in early July, Byrd returns in late July (he's not dead yet but he's looking peaked, y'all.) 59. Almost there.

Ted Kennedy, who never returned, dies in August and his seat is filled by another Democrat, Paul Kirk, at the end of September- temporarily until they can have an election.

60. Woohoo. Total control of Congress. Yesssss.

Until February when Scott Brown (R) wins Ted Kennedy's old seat. (Yes, blue states can elect Republicans. Elections matterrrrrr.)

4 whole months.

Do you know what they did with that 4 months (keep in mind they recess in there, too, so it's not even consecutive)? They pass the Affordable Care Act. Barely. After Joe twice-baked fucking potato Lieberman tanks the public option. One of the most consequential if not wholly imperfect pieces of legislation passed in the last twenty years. And it very nearly didn't. Seriously. Barely.

In that magical four months there was no political capital to codify Roe and pass the ACA. There just wasn't. Because that magic 60? It included Ben Nelson (NE), Peter Bayh (IN), Blanche Lincole (AK), Kent Conrad (ND), And Mary Landrieu (LA), among others, who were anti-abortion/ pro-life Blue Dog Dems. (Think Joe Manchin, but lots of them, ratfucking progress left and right.)

They didn't have the votes, darlings. And with the sad, small amount of time they did before Republicans wiped out Democratic control of both the House and the Senate in the 2010 midterm bloodbath, they changed health care as we know it (yes, it was even worse than it is now- so much worse).

That's the story morning glories. It's messy. Fraught. And it requires a lot more political knowledge than some knob on social media pontificating about "why didn't they just?" with absolutely no effort to put into the historical context.

We need to bring back School House Rock, I fear.

fandom isn't activism by the way. there's no way to do it good enough that it can stand in for putting in the work of real activism, but there's also no way to do it Bad enough that it cancels out any of your actual beliefs (as long as you treat the real people around you well, of course).

like, there's a difference between noticing that women tend to be under-represented in fics and linking that to societal misogyny (fandom as a whole is simply big enough that these trends are at least partially reflective of societal biases as a whole), and measuring specific characters and ships against each other and deciding that if one number gets below the other then feminism is LOSING.

or going up to specific People and grilling them about which characters they talk about most and why.

if someone is nice to women in real life and posts about wanting to raw old men all the time online then I think it literally doesn't matter at all actually.

recognizing that a trend As A Whole is probably influenced by societal bias doesn't translate to that Same bias being ever-present on an individual level. there's no way to write fanfic in a way that saves feminism.

fanfic is the Symptom, not the solution or even the problem. you treat the Societal Bias and the fanfic numbers change, you don't change societal bias by arguing with people online about the fics they do or don't write.

Sometimes people only write fics about gay sex because they're gay, and that's fine actually

it came to my realization that 99% of my fandom related headaches would be cured if everyone understood this

a comic i made is being sold on a shelf at my favorite cb store as of today and this post is still my biggest accomplishment of the day

This headcanon guide, if understood, would also reduce the Asks I get by about half.

happy pride month to this post specifically

Happy Pride!

Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions

I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.

i totally get venting about facing microaggressions in public for using a mobility aid, and i've totally done it myself, but after talking with some disabled people who are afraid to start using canes or rollators or wheelchairs because they're worried about people being assholes to them in public, i want to reiterate that my rollator changed my life and that the amount of harassment i've faced is frankly negligible.

anyway today i was able to take the train to physical therapy by myself, and stopped for coffee on the way back, and nothing bad happened and it was a beautiful day.

other mobility aid users feel free to share your stories about why it's worth it.

yeah people stare at me and once in a blue moon there's some harassment or whatever, but i can zoom around wherever i want in my power chair and it couldn't be more worth it.

once i was transferring from the car to my manual wheelchair using my walker, and a woman walked past moving very slowly with a cane, and she stopped, and she looked at me, and i greeted her, and she said "do you like your wheelchair?" and i was delighted! people rarely actually give me the chance to tell them how much i love my mobility aids. so i told her yeah, it's amazing, it doesn't totally meet my needs but it makes things so much easier, sometimes i can go places and do things i hadn't been able to do for years. the hardest part is when i can't move around because of the way people design and build buildings, or when people park bikes on the sidewalk, that sort of thing.

she said "that's really good to hear. i've been putting it off for a while and this makes me feel better about doing it. i'd LOVE to go places again." and i said "do it! it changes your life, it can be difficult sometimes but that's so small in the face of what it can do for you!"

most of the interactions i have with other people that are specifically about my mobility are positive moments of solidarity. not all, but the vast majority.

it's worth it and i will take every opportunity i can to tell other people that it's worth it. not just wheelchairs, any mobility aid. not a single person deserves to live even a single day putting off their mobility simply out of fear.

Yeah. I get annoyed, sometimes, with the specific design of this particular chair. But my life would suck so much worse if I didn't have it at all.

The best is when I'm out in public, and babies in strollers see me. They're fascinated by the thing that rolls by itself.

Also, I can do "spinnies" in it, whenever I want. And going down long, winding, ramps is a lot of fun.

Also, it's a positive feedback loop: the more people who are proud of their mobility aides, and go out in public using them, the more normalized it will be. And the less acceptable microaggressions will be.

I have also faced social advantages in terms of my accessibility needs since I started using a cane. Most people actually are pretty chill and want to be kind and helpful. They'll see the cane and give up a seat on the bus or move out of the way or whatever. Without the cane, it was entirely on me to ask strangers to accommodate me for an disability that they can't immediately see that I then have to figure out how much to explain.

It's an odd little self-defeating prophecy--if I bring my cane to the concert, people will make sure I have a seat, so I won't need the cane. If I don't bring my cane, no one will know I need a seat, so I will need the cane.

TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

Tomorrow is March 28th

like literally if i didn’t want to see some weird nonsense i wouldn’t be consuming scifi

“ohh this episode is about meeting a bunch of dinosaurs who developed space travel and left earth to go live on the other side of the galaxy isn’t that crazy?! isn’t that silly?!” sure yeah maybe a little but by focusing on that but you’re missing the narrative reason for it which is to provide a starting point to explore religious authoritarianism and the production of scientific knowledge

just a spoonful of [nonsense] helps the [critical thinking about uncomfortable social and structural problems that are such a fundamental part of the background radiation of our lives that we can't see them] go down

The nicest way to tell someone to go to hell.

ally beardsley i love u