More countdown drawings

Hey, we need to talk about the way Batfamily fans write Cass using ASL, because a lot of it is really fucking ableist

But Cass can't speak, of course she needs to sign!

Not true! There is nothing physically wrong with Cass's vocal chords or mouth, there's nothing in her brain stopping her from making sounds, and she is not an elective mute. She actually learns to speak individual words really quickly after she puts herself into an environment where that's a useful skill. Basil teaches her to quote huge chunks of Shakespeare in Nu52, and that's easier for her than forming simple sentences. That would definitely not be the case if she had any physical limitations on her speech.

Cass's disability is that she was not taught any language, and so she is having to grok the entire concept of language from the ground up. Grammar and syntax; tonality; how to combine words to convey more complex ideas; how putting two words next to one another can change their meaning; how to break down a whole idea into the individual parts needed to turn it into words; the fact that people's words might not line up with their tone and body language so you have to pay attention to both; how to tell if someone wants a response or is stating a fact; how to work out meaning from context if a word is new or someone has an unfamiliar accent; how to know if someone is using a new word or if they actually just have an unfamilar accent and all the ways words can be bent and changed before they become something new; the fact that two words can use the same sounds but have the same meaning; the fact that there can be two different words that mean the same thing. This is all stuff she didn't learn as a baby, and not knowing it would be just as much an impediment to learning ASL as learning English (for accent, swap out things like having limited movement in their hands, or having learned slightly different forms of the same sign, using a lot of home-signs etc, it's the same concept in a different medium).

There is no language on earth Cass wouldn't have these problems with. ASL is not any kind of shortcut.

But she reads body language, and ASL is kind of like body language right?

Not true, also pretty abelist! Just as the sounds which make up spoken language are essentially arbitrary (there's no objective reason why the sound "gud" should mean good, English speakers just all agree it does) so most of the signs in ASL are arbitrary! There's no reason for

ALT

to mean good. ASL users just all agree that it does. Cass knowing body language would not help her any more with ASL than it would with English, and if anything, it might make it harder, because sign uses the whole body and therefore changes the way people use body language so unless she saw a lot of ASL users as a child (and there's no particular reason to think she did), she would have to adjust what she knows about body language to account for those differences!

But she signs in the comics!

Nope! She uses hand gestures to communicate sometimes, but that's not signing. Pointing at food and miming eating to convey hunger is not sign. Pretending to punch someone and pulling it at the last second to convey you could hurt them but won't (Cass's actual first communication with Bruce in the comics) isn't signing. I've done the point and mime thing in countries where I didn't speak the language, that does not mean I knew that country's native sign language!

But she learns ballet, that's like a physical language, so sign is the same thing!

Nope! Also low key kinda abelist. Dance is a method of communication, but it isn't a full language. There's almost no grammar or sentence structure, the vocabulary is extremely limited, and also you can just make up new dance moves or use moves from different styles of dance together and still convey your meaning (you cannot just make random gestures or use BSL and expect ASL users to understand you, because they're full complex languages). Cass vibes with dance pretty hard, but that's precisely because it isn't a language, it doesn't require any of the skills she struggles with in order to communicate emotion.

But ASL isn't like a real language, it's not as complex or nuanced as spoken English so it would be easier for her to learn

That is so fucking gross I don't even want to have this conversation with you. Go and sit in the timeout box and think about what you've just said, and then commit to doing better.

But I just think that once she learned it, she'd like using ASL because [it's very expressive/she's used to her world being very quiet/she can use it on stealth missions more easily/etc]

Valid, understandable, have a lovely day

But I'm writing an AU were she uses ASL because her backstory is too comic-book-y to fit in no-capes AUs but I didn't want to erase her communication difficulties so I've written her as having a different disability

Cool. Send me a link when you're done.

But what if I write her using makatong?

(For context, makatong is a form of sign developed for people who have intellectual or phsyical disabilities that affect language use, which uses more descriptive signs which require less precise hand possitioning than other sign languages, and which has very simple grammar, making it easier to learn than ASL). Yes this would be easier for her, because it's intended for people with similar difficulties to hers, but since her difficulties stem purely from a lack of experience which can be (and are, in canon) overcome with practise, it would be kind of needlessly limiting compared to her just starting out with very simple spoken language, and wouldn't give her as many chances to develop those language learning skills. Makatong is also not mutually intelligable with any other sign language, so she couldn't easily transition from that to ASL once she got used to signing, she'd have to start learning it from scratch.

But I HC her as deaf

There is 0 comics evidence to support that, but it's a headcanon, so who cares. You do you. Have fun.

But learning sign language would be better than learning to speak anyway because it's a universal language!

That is not even slightly how it work. Go read the wikipedia article on sign languages around the world or something. Do some research.

TL:DR; Cass does not use ASL in the comics, and nothing about her disability or sign languages in general would make learning ASL easier or more convinent for her than spoken English. That does't mean writing her signing is inherently bad, but you should examine your reasons for doing it to ensure you're not just perpetuating ableist stereotypes about the language.

less jason todd body horror being attributed to the pit and more because he’s a cosmic mistake whose revival is unexplainable

He runs hot, he runs cold. Half his face sometimes goes numb, resulting in a lopsided expressions. His insides sometimes just stop. There are pauses, slight minuscule pauses in his blood flow, heart beat. He goes to sleep only to die and wake up. For 10 to 20 seconds, but that will do. Little nightly deaths.

His right wrist sometimes aches. Some of the mornings, he wakes up as stiff as a corpse. Some mornings, rare, but at leat once a month, he wakes up to this immobilized stiffness, and has to go through his body, willfully jerking it awake, very much like Tarantino's "The Bride". All while trapped in his own shell of skin and bone, muscles yet to respond, he goes back to his training, of all the techniques he learned to leave this state of wake paralysis.

He bleeds more. He bleeds less. Small scarring opens up then closes on itself unprompted like an undecisive hemophilia.

He's one leg in the grave.

people keep trying to make "ladies and gentlemen" more inclusive.

I think we should go the other way around.

make more and more weird false dichotomies in greetings. "gamers and pianists". "oil painters and swordsmen". "vexillologists and entomologists". "chess masters and diamond artificers". "accountants and gendered individuals".

we need to be dropping shit into formal meetings to make people say "wait what? which one am I?"

I have started referring to my students as “critters and creatures.” I then offer them the option to decide where on the critter–creature spectrum they think they belong. They enjoy this immensely. I teach some critters, some creatures, some 50/50s, some critters with creature tendencies, some creatures with critter inclinations.

all i have to say is 'hello cowards' and it shuts gendering up

“Listen up, fives, a ten is speaking,” has always been gender-inclusive.

seal snarts.....sneals.....anyway here's something for mermay

some notes from Cissy's post-hoot

1. hunter bi and willow pan!!!!
2. Raine has moved into the owl house, whether or not they married Eda is up to fans' interpretation (Though Dana did mention marriage shouldn't be required to define love). In any case, they are in a loving relationship
3. DOES THAT MEAN RAINE HAS TO SLEEP IN THE NEST??
4. odalia and Alador did promptly get a divorce <33
5. the blight kids live w Alador and only rarely visit Odalia, and don't put up with any of her shit
6. King's tower was built and hidden by someone with amnesia..... BAT QUEEN?
7. Hooty probably spends most of his time away from the owl house as port-a-hooty, with Lilith, working as a curator at the museum
8. stringbean has been visible in the show logo since the very first episode (!), visible in the S and the L when it's flipped upside down
9. The collector does visit the isles often and is in frequent contact with king (but there was no confirmation if they've found or interacted with the archivists)
10. no comments were made as to whether Vee and Masha are still dating, but Vee did definitely have a crush on them
11. Luz finished high school on the isles, spending weekends and holidays in the demon realm
12. Flapjack was a gift to Caleb from Evelyn, and was probably the turning point in both their relationship and in caleb's acceptance of magic
13. neither Hunter nor Eda know about Eda's relation to Evelyn and Caleb (but it was hinted Gwendolyn might...)
14. The shack behind Luz's house where the portal is was originally where Caleb and Phillip lived; it was basically a ruin until Eda fixed it up during her time in the human realm
15. eda carved Owlbert herself, AFTER she got cursed as a way of reclaiming and accepting the owlbeast
16. Raine's palisman was hidden as part of their violin (you can see the head in the scroll). It did not die when the violin got smashed, and Dell helped repair the staff

This is all I can remember for now, feel free to add anything that I missed! Hopefully we get more of these behind the scenes discussions of the show, if you haven't seen the video I've put the link under the break <33

Keep reading

huge news for my fellow fictional map enthusiasts. i think i just found a (semi-)canon map of wayne manor

from The Batman Sourcebook for the DC Heroes RPG, published in 1989:

Me: *reading comics in a random order* damn, these timelines are confusing :/

me reading comics in chronological order: damn these timelines are confusing :/

Me reading comics in their suggested reading order: damn, these timelines are confusing :/

ordered pizza from a small local place and they didnt actually cut it so i've chosen to revert to a wild animal and begin ripping it apart instead of just using a knife to portion slices

absolutely visceral experience. food is so much more satisfying when you have to fight it. i may be feral

i am not proud to say this but that pizza lasted fifteen minutes. i normally am not that gluttonous, but this goes beyond glutton. there was gluttony and wrath. a whirlwind of sauce, cheese, and pepperoni, all atop a flatbread that was shred apart by my own hands due to the neglect of another

in that moment i was wild. i was free. i understood the simplest joys in life. the joy of eating and manifesting my own destiny

been reflecting on this all day and the unsliced pizza experience honestly ruled. i think everyone should try it sometime or another. you have not truly lived until you just absolutely obliterated a pizza in such a feral manner

is this you

yes

run

My best friend and I have this tradition we call “chicken dinner” where we get a rotisserie chicken, lay it on a tarp, start on opposite ends of the tarp, and on the count of three we both run at the chicken and start ripping into it with our bear hands. We will be on our knees fighting for the best pieces of meat, ripping into the chicken with our faces, and it is the most viscerally delicious chicken I have ever had in my life. Grease gets everywhere. We have to do this outside. We have to tie our hair in buns beforehand.

You have never known the joy of food until you are lunging at your friend to rip the best part of the chicken out of their hand, rolling around on the tarp, stuffing it in your face before they can retaliate, and you realize “holy shit did I just growl?” And then you realize they are doing it too.

The chicken gets decimated. It’s absolutely destroyed. We aren’t allowed back inside until we have been hosed down. It’s the best.