When he’s 8, Tim’s nanny stops dropping him off at school, and Tim doesn’t say anything other than answers to direct questions for a month. He stops inviting other kids to play with them, after that, and Ives has never been the kind of person people want to play with so it’s usually just the 2 of them.
When he’s 12, some kid Tim has never even met dies, and he cries in school. He doesn’t tell Ives about his crazy plans for the future anymore and stops inviting himself to Ives’ house.
When he’s 13, Tim’s mom dies, and Tim starts lying. He says he’s already seen Terminator 2. He offers Ives mysterious cookies that he says Mrs. Mac baked.
When he’s 16, Tim’s dad dies. Tim moves to Bludhaven and stops having friends for 2 months. When Ives tries to ask Steph if Tim’s still talking to her, he finds out she’s gone too. Tim comes back perfectly fine and they only talk about movies and video games. Ives doesn’t know if Tim’s watched any of them.
When he’s 17, nothing happens to Tim at all, that Ives can tell, but Tim disappears anyways. Ives next sees him in a suit, holding a press conference. They go out for coffee once and talk about inanities. Tim gets engaged. Ives has never been the kind of person people want to hang out with, but he’s adapted. There’s people he talks to.
When he’s almost 18, Tim shows up at Ives’ house on crutches, holding an honest to goodness VHS. It’s Terminator 2. Ives doesn’t own a VCR anymore, so he forces Tim to change into something other than the suit while he downloads a copy. Tim says that he thinks his father might be a zombie. Ives tells him that if he finished school he wouldn’t have problems like that. Tim says that’s almost certainly true, but he’s going to be a billionaire playboy CEO and doesn’t NEED a high school diploma.
Ives wants to tell Tim that he isn’t going anywhere, but decides that research into ways to reverse zombification would probably be more helpful. They watch the movie.
god, imagine sharing a bed with the person you love. chatting about dumb things! just sleeping! it’s like a sleepover but every night how sweet is that!!!!
It’s wonderful! Last night we:
talked about our next date night, and decided that going to Second Cup (Canadian coffee chain) to hang out was more fun than sexy times
told each other to stop talking so we could sleep
made sure there was a wall of pillows between us so that he couldn’t touch or breath on me
told each other we loved each other multiple time, because we were too tired for complex conversation, but wanted to talk
I reclaimed the duvet from him multiple times, because he’s stronger than me when we’re sleeping
I patted his head, and he snaked his arm through my pillow wall to hold my hip
I love being with with him so much.
Lately I’ve been really focused on non-fandom stuff.
I did read Generation X, and enjoyed it. Found the second volume of Princeless at the library and thought it was great. (Definitely aimed at younger teens. I like that.) But I’m barely even reading fanfic right now. It makes me sad.
Research has also slowed down, because my beautiful keyboard layout finally became obsolete. BU Keys supported my terrible habits for over 3 years. I could type IPA characters, but I could ALSO use non-IPA characters, and transcribe Old Irish, Classical Arabic, Nêhirawêwin (Proto-Cree), Apabhraṃśa/Sanskrit, etc. Near the end, it struggled – IPA had new characters it didn’t support, and I needed to get a supporting keyboard layout for when I wanted retroflex characters. Then I updated, and it was gone. You will be missed, BU Keys.
So now I’m making my own layout. Keyman Developer makes it reasonably easy, and I do have some basic programming knowledge. (My IT-centric highschool had a lot of courses, and I took first year university stuff.) I’m about 60% done. Right now, I’m struggling to figure out how to implement ‘if-else’ statements. I really hope they exist. Luckily, I have a computer programmer for a husband.
Anyways, I’m excited about my keyboard. It’s designed to allow you to add 71 diacritics and 18 types of character modification. Which is excessive. BUT. I can use an Insular G (
ᵹ ) in one sentence, a Chi ( χ
) in the next, use ‘ś’ for the ‘sh’ sound in Hindi, but ‘ʃ’ for the same sound in IPA – it’s great.
ALL OF MY LOVES RIGHT HERE. I’ll even forget the “that that’s” line in there. BECAUSE THIS PANEL IS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURTS RN.
You know, as sweet as it is that Wally thinks so highly of Dick, it also makes me sad to see the way he talks about him here: “a machine,” “perfection in a mask,” like he’s just the effortlessly and inhumanly perfect standard the rest of them are held up to, not a human being who’s struggling in his own right.
This is a long-running theme in their relationship, too:
Wally: And I’m not like Dick. I can’t juggle half a dozen problems at once and still do everything so perfectly. Sometimes I envy him that talent. (New Teen Titans #28)
Roy and Gar and several other characters have made similar comments over the years – Tim even teasingly refers to Dick as “Mr. Perfect”. And it’s lovely, it’s great that so many characters admire and look up to him. But it also belies the fact that Dick’s “perfection” tends to come at a high cost, and it’s always a struggle for him. He had to drop out of college because (contrary to what Wally assumes here), he couldn’t effortlessly juggle everything and “still do everything so perfectly”. He constantly works himself past both his physical and mental breaking point. And what Wally describes up there about how Roy is “always competing with someone… Ollie, Dick, even himself… and coming up short” is actually strikingly similar to how Dick’s described his relationship to Bruce:
Dick: When I’m with Batman, I’m a mass of insecurities. No matter how much I try, I can never be as good as he is. (New Titans #57)
Wally and Roy and the others might look at Dick and see a “machine”, an unattainable standard of perfection that they’ll never be able to match, but Dick just looks at himself and sees someone who’ll never be as good as Bruce. More than that, he sees himself as a constant failure for not living up to his own impossibly high standards for who he thinks he should be, much like how Wally says Roy is competing against “even himself”.
I’ve pointed out in the past that Dick is obsessed with the idea of “failing” people, to the point that I’d even argue it’s his deepest fear. And it’s something he believes he’s been guilty of many times over, even though the people in his life couldn’t see things more differently. (In one particularly heartbreaking exchange, he tells Babs that “I know I failed you”, and her response is “You never failed me. I don’t know if you’re capable of such a thing.”) Even as an adult, we see him still beating himself up for “failures” from his earliest days as Robin, nearly a decade (or more) earlier:
Dick: I almost failed him. I couldn’t save Meany and I nearly got Batman killed.
Tim: It was a no-win situation, Nightwing. You both came out alive. That’s what’s important.
Dick: I know you’re right. But it doesn’t help. (Robin #0)
Of the Titans, only Donna seems to fully understand how far from perfect Dick really is, and how deeply he struggles to act like he is:
Donna: Dick’s pushing himself. He works with us, on his own, he goes to school, and then he works alongside the Batman. And you know how he feels about the Batman. He wants to be as good… even though he never can be. He’s just not driven the way the Batman is. He hasn’t got that same fanatical obsession. So Dick’s all tense trying to do too many things at once. The best you can do is get him to relax. (New Teen Titans #28)
It’s vitally important to note that this is the same issue where we see Wally talking about how he envies Dick’s ability to “juggle half a dozen problems at once and still do everything so perfectly”. Wally might look at Dick and think he’s just effortlessly staying on top of everything, but we’re very purposely shown that it’s not true. Dick’s trying to “juggle” far more than he’s actually capable of handling (he mentions in the same issue that “I haven’t had more than three hours’ sleep in the last three days”), and we see the constant pressure making him tense and irritable, to the point where Donna has to explain to Kory why he’s acting this way.
This is true throughout Dick’s life, something we’ve consistently seen throughout his history. Dick isn’t “perfection in a mask”, nor is he a “machine” who can effortlessly stay on top of everything. What he is is an overachieving perfectionist who tries to take responsibility for everything and everyone and mercilessly beats himself up about it when he fails in even the slightest way. And it’s kind of sad that as close as they truly are, as many years as they’ve been friends, Wally still doesn’t seem to quite understand how deep that struggle goes.
I think I’m the only person on Tumblr who doesn’t like closed captions. I mean, they’re fine if there’s a person in the room who needs them, but on my own I don’t turn them on.
Because the words appear slightly before the actors say them, and I read faster than actors generally talk, it’s like a micro-spoiler for me. Or like listening to a soundtrack with an annoying echo. It’s like:
Darth Vader: No, I
Caption: No, I am your father
Darth Vader: am your father
It’s just not my favorite way to experience things.
Also, they are not always placed well, and sometimes do block actor’s expressions or other important things.
Also I’m not really capable of listening to dialogue while reading it, or of ignoring the subtitles, so I actually miss things like tone, and even other visual things, because I couldn’t help reading and I can’t process and integrate/coordinate three streams of information at once.
Obviously I would not object if someone else needed subtitles, but they are distinctly suboptimal for me personally.
Yeah, I definitely get this.
I benefit from subtitles, but never use them if my Little Sister is around, unless it’s anime. Her learning disability makes reading them exhausting for her, and she can only do it if there are no distractions.
Similarly, my mama can’t follow the plot if there are subtitles on the screen.
Heyǃ Sunshineǃ I made this for youǃǃ I’m not sure if you’ll see it, but I hope you do, because I really really like you. This is your name written in Maya glyphs, because you are my Glyph Friendǃ
Glyph Says:
(UPPERCASE means that the glyph stands for a word, not a syllable. Click on symbols you don’t recognize to hear them pronounced.)
ja-JAL-la(x2) K’IN ‘i tza(x2)-tza-wi-WINIK-ko-ba (See image and explanation below)
Arrow/Reeds Sun and Strong-Strong People
Rays of Sun and Super People
Notes (can be ignored, but I love language and want to share)ː
The 2 dots in the corner mean you read the character twice.
2 is more often read ‘TAL’, so I wrote it ‘ja-JAL-la’ to emphasize the correct pronunciation. This is a frequent strategy scribes used.
‘tzatz’ means ‘strong’ in Colonial sources. Doubling a word is often used to emphasize it, like adding ‘very’ in front. ‘tzatz-tzatz’ was a bit of a mouthful, and seemed like it might get contracted to ‘tza-tzatz.’
when the vowels of characters don’t match, it means you need add a long vowel, ‘h’, or glottal stop (ʔ). That’s why ‘ko-ba’ is pronounced ‘-oʔb,’ which is a plural for people related words.
listen. cut off your hair. cut off all your damn hair. do you ever hear a man wondering if he’s too ugly to have short hair? no!!! there is no such thing as too ugly to have short hair. if you don’t want your hair, just cut off your hair. it feels so so so good.
One of the best moments in my life was shaving off all my hair in grade 12.
Some background:
Canada has a newspaper strip called ‘For Better Or For Worse.’ I loved it when I was younger. When I was 10ish, one of the characters did this:
[Image from the strip showing a young high school student named Candace, who’s shaved her head. All you can see is short stubble. Guys are grinning as they pass by, and Elizabeth, one of the main characters, is gossiping with another friend about it.]
Everyone in the comic was scandalized, and it was used as a sign of how troubled the girl was. I, however, thought she looked beautiful. I kept that image in my mind for the next half a decade.
Grade 12, I’ve spent all of highschool as the good little Christian girl. People are uncomfortable swearing around me, even though I assure them that it’s okay. I’m a few months away from getting the “Teacher’s Pet” scholarship, where the teachers choose their favourite student to give money to. My hair falls half way down my back.
I am a good little girl, so I ask my parents for PERMISSION to shave all my hair off. After getting me to promise to get early grad pictures beforehand, my mama granted it.
(Actually, she tells me that I’m allowed to make my own decisions, because she worries that I’m not good enough at teenage rebellion. Little does she know,
¡I am secretly renting science fiction and action movies from Blockbuster and watching them on the frigid main floor at night, when everyone’s asleep! … maybe she had a point.)
My mama chops my hair off, and then shaves my scalp. And I look as beautiful as I imagined I would. (At least, in my opinion.) I walk into school the next day to stares and shock. It’s AMAZING. And I get to do it again at church on Sundayǃ It was the best week.
And then I discovered that hair takes forever to grow out; head stubble isn’t pretty; it’s too cold in Manitoba to wander around bald; and if you’re bald, wear a guy’s jacket that was left at your house, and have a decidedly non-feminine walkː everyone thinks that you’re a guy. And treat you different. Which is dumb. (I was already getting treated like a precious treasure because I was about to be the first girl to graduate with a computer science dual diploma. I was sick of it all.)
When you feel beautiful and free, other people matter less. When you feel like a bedraggled cactus, other’s opinions matter more.
THE PERSON I HOOK UP WITH RECOGNIZED MY FIC AS MINE AS THEY READ IT BECAUSE THE SEX IN IT REMINDED THEM TOO MUCH OF THE SEX WE’VE HAD………. I WANT TO DIE……………….
this deadass sounds like a fic plot
it’s not my FAULT
NATHANIEL I CANNOT BELIEVE
[Images are two screencaps of text conversations. Grammar and punctuation added for legibility.
First one:
Hook Up: “Okay here’s the funny part: I realized it was you because of the smut.”
Jewish Cap: “Oh NO.”
Hook Up: “An overwhelming experience, TBH.”
Second conversation:
Hook Up: You lifted a scene straight out of our sex life, made the feelings More Fucked Up, and then wrote it to the tune of Supernatural fanfiction.
“That is not to say that it isn’t an excellent fic!!! It was really very good.“
Jewish Cap: “Does it make it better or worse that it was completely unintentional?”
kiragecko 