chasing nightmares

People commonly defend this practise with "But the audience isn't meant to understand!" or "It's inconsequential!", neither of which actually address a) their assumption that the [ideal Anglo] audience wouldn't understand, or, perhaps most crucially in the context of CCs, b) that this is a failure of accessibility. A hearing person who speaks that "foreign" language will know exactly what's being said. A deaf or HoH person – the people CCs are primarily intended for – who speaks or reads that language should therefore have the exact same opportunity to understand. It very much feels to me like an assumption that we deaf and HoH people couldn't possibly understand any language but English, so there's no point in getting those languages transcribed for us. I hope it goes without saying how profoundly audist that sentiment is.

There is also, I think, a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of Deaf culture at play. Which is to say, CCs in English-language media are written with not only the assumption that the audience will be native English speakers, but that all d/Deaf and HoH people speak English as their first language, so all other languages are as supposedly foreign to them as they are for hearing people. But sign languages are their own distinct language. BSL, ASL, ISL, AusLan, NZSL etc ≠ English (and are indeed different from one another), LIS ≠ Italian, JSL ≠ Japanese, and so on. So, if you follow the captioners' logic to its natural extreme, all non-signed dialogue is "foreign" to many d/Deaf and HoH people and should therefore be labelled [speaks foreign language] / [speaks English] / [speaks own language] / etc. – which is, obviously, a terrible idea that perfectly highlights all the biases implicit in closed captioning.

About two hours later I was permanently banned from r/MadeMeSmile for “self-promotion.”

I accepted that different communities have different rules.But then something even stranger happened.Soon afterward, a moderator from r/pics started going through my account. Not just the new post—many of my older painting posts disappeared as well. One after another. Then I was permanently banned there too.

Maybe it was the same moderator. Maybe it wasn’t. I honestly don’t know.

What surprised me wasn’t even the ban itself. It was realizing how much power individual moderators have over what millions of people are allowed to see. One decision can erase years of posts from a community and instantly cut off your ability to participate, even if those posts had been happily sitting there for months or years.I’m not saying moderators shouldn’t have rules. Communities need moderation.But it does make you wonder where the line is between protecting a community and allowing a single interpretation of the rules to completely reshape what people can share.

The funny part?

I wasn’t advertising anything in those posts. I wasn’t posting prices or asking anyone to buy anything. I was simply sharing my original paintings because I enjoy discussing art with strangers from around the world.

Anyway…

Here’s the painting that apparently caused all the trouble. 🎨

Although this is more serious than my usual content, and although it isn't perfect, I made this as tribute and wanted to bring attention to the Yu Menglong case

If I'm bring honest, I haven't heard of him until after he died, and I regret it. Even though I've heard about him only recently, hearing about this case breaks my heart. It wasn't a suicide, it wasn't an accident, it was torture and murder. I really hope he gets the justice he needs

Please sign this petition as well, it's free

- You dreamt of me? - No. I thought of you.

There is no victory in skipping dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or morning coffee, or dessert.

There is no victory in refusing heaters and air conditioners and fans and heated blankets.

There is no victory in denying yourself sleep, or showers, or movement, or water, or a comfortable bed, or taking the elevator vs. the stairs.

There is no victory in refusing pain meds and heating pads and ice packs and medical help.

There is no victory in punishing yourself needlessly, in telling yourself that this pain you feel is because you are bad to the core and deserve it.

There is no victory in choking back your laughter and your tears, to keep an imagined equilibrium of safety that is really just a dry, cracked, empty, endless emotional desert.

You are here. You are in this body, and this body is yours. You deserve good things. You are alive, and that is messy and loud, and messy and loud are okay.

Even just on the level of messaging, compare “Freedom House Ambulance Service” vs “Defund the Police”. One sounds like it’s about freedom, it’s about providing, it’s a service. The other frames itself as defunding, taking away infrastructure that—whether you personally agree or not—people broadly view as a service. There is nothing about “Defund the Police” or “ACAB” etc. (whose underlying critiques I broadly agree with) that intuitively suggests to anyone hearing it for the first time that what we’re suggesting is reallocating funds to empower and provide a better, safer, demilitarized kind of infrastructure. It’s just “get rid of this thing that most people feel like they need”.

We find THE most dystopian, tear-it-all-down, shockjock asshole-sounding ways to express a point & then spend so much time defending that choice & explaining “no no actually it’s really sensible” (often with an air of superiority, as if to say “you’re so stupid for thinking the dystopian-sounding thing i said isn’t actually dystopian”) that we never seem to get around to do the damn thing. rather than notice that we’re alienating our allies & learn from this, we just dig our heels in & refuse to adjust.

Why can’t we just say what we mean? Demilitarize the Police. Fund Welfare. Reallocate City Funds. Provide Social Services. If you don’t want to sound like you’re trying to strip apart societal infrastructure you don’t have to! If you’re trying to communicate that you’re trying to provide a service… you can just say that up front. We don’t have to marry ourselves to the **ABOLISH** ** DESTROY** **SMASH** **DEFUND** framing.

But it’s not just PR or tone or whatever.

FHAS also didn’t wait for permission or demand to get rid of the police-run ambulance first; they saw where the police-run ambulance was lacking and they filled the gap themselves. they they provided a solution. the only reason they got the trust & funding from the city government in the first place was by proving they could do it better.

also, as much as this story may illustrate an example of fixing the system from outside it, it still required cooperation with & working alongside the pre-existing system. they used donated police vehicles. the police called them in to help. they didn’t say “fuck the system” wholesale, burn it to the ground, & make something better in the ashes. they sprang up from the community, ensured their quality of service was better, & offered their help.

ɪ’ᴍ ʏᴏᴜʀ ꜰʀᴇᴀᴋʏ ɴɪᴋᴋɪ ❤️

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love everyone contributing to the absolute hoard of dice for emily to roll

+ bonus: some delighted emily faces

He forged the path with his Army fan projects, and screamed "ARMY" at the top of his lungs whenever they won an award to thank us, and made sure we knew who we were and where we stood in their hearts.

Seeing him hold that sign during army-ment time is just one of the many ways that Jin has continuously nurtured our bond.

Some might see this and think it's cute, which it is, don't get me wrong 

But for someone like me, who loved bts so much, it just confirms what I said the other day.

With BTS & ARMY, it's never been 1 sided.