I Feel A Special Kinship With People Who Use The Same Color Notebook For A Class As Me.

I know I don’t have very many followers but for those of you who do, a notice that I changed my URL to “Ionlyrunfromshame” 

I Climbed the Gates of Heaven

A short poem written by me, loosely based off the concept from this piece of literature. 

                                  I Climbed the Gates of Heaven A white, soft light appears behind my eyelids. I open them slowly but the light gets no brighter. It is comforting and warm. The world comes into focus. Smiling people and joy. Reunions occur all around me. My grandparents are there, happy and young. They wrap me in a hug. But there is one face I don't see. I break from their embrace and call out. My voice is musical, beautiful. But it receives no reply. I run down the street, gold beneath my feet. But I don't take the time to admire it. There is a greater beauty in wait. My family calls after me, laughing. "What is the rush, my child?" But I don't turn back. When I reach it, it is huge, standing tall over everything. I cannot see the top from the ground. The pearl is cold to the touch but somehow still soft. Reaching out, I place my feet and pull myself up the bars. I hear them calling me. But I don't look back. I slip a couple times and almost fall. My muscles tired and aching. But I don't hesitate. When I at last reach the top, I swing my legs over and sit. The wails of the lonely reach my ears. The cries of the left behind. I climbed the gates of heaven. I descend slowly and the farther I go, the colder it gets. The bars become more solid, more unforgiving. I falter more often but I do not stop. At the bottom I am surrounded by thick fog. The air is stagnant yet harsh and I gasp loudly. But everything is muted here. I step around those howling by the entrance. Demanding admittance to where I have left. They have no eyes for me nor I for them. I call your name again but it is rough to my ears. I call louder, pushing my way into the fog. Like a whisper, I hear you call back. I am running now, falling often on the uneven ground. But I pick myself up, running faster. Pushed on by that whisper of you. The last time I fall I am caught by your arms. A white light emerges from where your hands touch mine. You are soft and warm. As I sigh out your name my voice is again musical. Your smile is radiant. The fog recedes in its wake. I climbed the gates of heaven. I climbed the gates of heaven, To be with you, Because you, Are all the heaven I need. 

One note = one vote. Like or reblog to vote for your state! Go Illinois! 

my intent is not to be mean but I am sure it will come off that way anyways so I'm sorry for asking, but I am genuinely curious how you, a sighted person, reading braille is any different than a sighted person cosplaying as matt murdock.

wow, i, uh. i don’t really have an easy way to answer this question.

cosplaying matt murdock - or any other disabled character - if you’re nondisabled is taking on a set of experiences that’s associated with a tremendous amount of stigma and systemic oppression for the sake of a costume. it’s approaching the tools and aspects of lived experience and turning them into something fun for a day that can be taken off and cast aside when it gets inconvenient.

 it’s an action that’s totally ignorant of the impact of media, the social and historical contexts of spectatorship and disability, the lack of prominent disabled characters as representation, and the real life accusations of ‘faking disability’ that disabled people face every day (and which severely impact availability of needed resources). it’s disrespectful and harmful. 

so. that’s cosplay. 

now, i’m working in a broad sense to become more knowledgeable about accessibility, alternative formats, and the representation and misrepresentation of disability so that i can explore these things in more formal academic contexts and hopefully work towards more relevant and valuable change. i’m probably going to graduate with a focus in disability studies. 

as far as braille comes in, i’m in the process of writing a 100+ page research paper on the representation of disability in daredevil. i’ve read about 200 daredevil comics, but i realized pretty early on that my paper would be absolutely valueless if my only point of attention was the comics themselves, so i did a lot of really varied reading and study. i am sighted, and the experiences matt murdock has as a blind person aren’t in any way something i would ever feel like i could just like, assume to be able to talk about. they’ll never be something i’ll be fully aware of, ever, but i think research remains important, because a paper like the one i’m writing doesn’t exist in the world and i think it’s valuable. 

i’m working on learning braille because of its inclusion/lack of inclusion in the daredevil comics and its subsequent connection to my research topic, but also because a major part of what i’m working on is making a piece of media that centers so fully on a blind character accessible to blind/visually impaired people. because i think structures of accountability are really really key to representational work, and right now that’s basically impossible. braille is one aspect of a potential ‘accessibility kit’ that i’m working on for comics. 

primarily, though, i’m learning braille because my attention to disability, representation of disability, accessibility, etc. extends well beyond this specific piece of media in a way that’s very distinct from the lack of awareness in cosplaying this character. i think it’s important to effectively address situations of inaccessibility and ableism, and doing so requires being knowledgeable and aware. i don’t know if things are improperly or incompletely labeled if i can’t read those labels. i don’t know how things should be formatted correctly, i don’t know if something’s a valid alternative format, i don’t have a method available to try to help make things suck less. like, many many many of the buildings at my college are incompletely brailled. so i’m working with the office of disability services and independently to try to approach that issue. 

a lot of people accessorize basic braille. in those contexts, braille is stripped of its significance. it’s reduced to a fun thing for sighted people to play with and throw aside. the same thing is true of ASL. those uses of braille and ASL are absolutely in the same sort of vein as cosplaying a disabled character, because they’re disrespectful and unaware. but i don’t think that learning braille and ASL are inherently damaging or thoughtless. learning braille allows me to become a resource for translation and a prompt towards accountability. 

ultimately it comes down to this: i’m working really hard to be aware of my positionality and how easy it is to accessorize experiences of disability. of course i fuck up, and i really encourage you to call me out if you see that happen. but for me, learning braille isn’t like. collecting action figures and t-shirts and reading as many comics as possible. it isn’t about the character. it’s about developing more tools to approach accessibility, accountability, representation, awareness. 

achilles & patroclus commissioned by scarlett–west

>> commissions are always open <<

One of my favorite bit characters in Les mis is the poor random porter of Gillenormand who has to deal with Jean Valjean and Javert showing up at night with a mostly-dead Marius. He’s just so confused! He hasn’t read the first 1000 pages of Les Miserables so he has no context for Jean Valjean and Javert. He spends the entire conversation being utterly baffled.

POV: you’re just trying to sleep when you hear loud knocking at the door. Outside are two weird old men. One is a bizarre cop who seems to be operating on autopilot— he keeps mechanically saying incorrect nonsense like “here is Gilleormand’s dead’s son” even though Gillenormand has no son and the man they’re carrying isn’t dead. The other old man is some horrible-looking buff weirdo covered in sewage. They clearly have a History but you don’t know what it is.

They try to drag you into their relationship drama. One says Marius is dead, the other says nothing but exhaustedly shakes his head in disagreement in a way that makes him seem very Done with all of this. You are even more confused. You do not want to be part of this drama.

Javert addressed the porter in a tone befitting the government, and the presence of the porter of a factious person.

“Some person whose name is Gillenormand?”

“Here. What do you want with him?”

“His son is brought back.”

“His son?” said the porter stupidly.

“He is dead.”

Jean Valjean, who, soiled and tattered, stood behind Javert, and whom the porter was surveying with some horror, made a sign to him with his head that this was not so.

The porter did not appear to understand either Javert’s words or Jean Valjean’s sign.

Then you try to ask for clarification. The cop just repeats that the not-dead Marius is actually dead, vaguely says he got himself killed at the barricades—and then he very helpfully states that when people die there are funerals, as if he’s just stating a random fact he knows about death. This clarifies nothing. You finally just walk away and make it someone else’s problem. Good for you.

Javert continued:

“He went to the barricade, and here he is.”

“To the barricade?” ejaculated the porter.

“He has got himself killed. Go waken his father.”

The porter did not stir.

“Go along with you!” repeated Javert.

And he added:

“There will be a funeral here to-morrow.”

For Javert, the usual incidents of the public highway were categorically classed, which is the beginning of foresight and surveillance, and each contingency had its own compartment; all possible facts were arranged in drawers, as it were, whence they emerged on occasion, in variable quantities; in the street, uproar, revolt, carnival, and funeral.

The porter contented himself with waking Basque. Basque woke Nicolette; Nicolette roused great-aunt Gillenormand.

And then the two of them leave, and youre left with all the confusion of someone who’s been plunged into the middle of Jean Valjean and Javert’s weirdness without any of the context of Victor Hugo’s hit 1862 novel Les miserables:

The porter watched them take their departure as he had watched their arrival, in terrified somnolence.

please reblog! (and tips are greatly appreciated)

examples: fanart - personal art/other commissions

- please pay as soon as i accept your commission as i’ve had a couple of people pay me two or three weeks late and i can’t afford it!

- if you want to commission me, please email me at chazgilbert1995@gmail.com

- if you like what i make for you you can also ask me to put it in my society6 shop so you can buy it on a variety of products

- I will send the initial sketch/lineart before colouring so you can tell me everything you need me to tweak!

- if you want me to post your commission on tumblr as well as emailing it to you (all emails are highest resolution) please leave your url so i can tag you

constantlykatelyn

Pigeon + afro = Pigeafro ! 

La vie pourrait être tellement mieux avec cette espèce là xD !

If they existed ;U;, watch it with salsa or tango, it’s great xD

Gorgeous and fantastic commission for me by batcii (who is super nice and amazingly talented) of Achilles and Patroclus being young and in love. 

What the ever-loving fuck? 

I just finished watching After the Dark and I am...I am astounded. I think I loved it? But I'm so in shock at present that I can't decide. I certainly loved the plot and the characters were phenomenal...it was incredibly visually effective and beautiful...

But the ending! I have no idea how to handle it!

Please, if anyone has seen it, please please please talk to me about it. Please, I'm begging you. Someone needs to share in this delightful, brain-fucked agony.