D I N E R

The gangly man himself, Jonathan Crane

Batman Annual #19 || Scanned at 300dpi

I should have been studying for my finals over the weekend. Instead, I drew Princess Unattainabelle. Also, why must my scanner murder my pink tones so viciously?

It's officially Banned Books Week, so now is as good a time as any to remind everyone that libraries still get frequent challenges to books on our shelves. Books continue to be challenged, banned, and even burned. I'm a librarian in a blue state, yet one of my neighboring libraries has recently been the target of book bannings and threats of violence (they had to shut down an all-ages LGBTQ event due to these threats too).

Please support your local libraries. If you want more books by queer and disabled authors and authors of color, TELL US. Give us recommendations. Check out books and ebooks when we get them in. Tell us when you write books too. We're here to make information and stories accessible.

P.S. And if you notice patrons or staff acting like assholes (particularly managers) please let someone know. Library government is weird, so a lot of libraries aren't union and also don't have any sort of HR. Trust me, if you frequently notice someone being a jerk, chances are good everyone else has to and has been stonewalled.

Oh Billy, you look so small right there…

I get so fucking angry when people try to rationalize why parents abuse children and it’s always “oh parents have been thru it too” “oh they had a hard life” “oh they were abused too” “oh they never knew love so how could they give it” and what they’re basically saying is: Well, the child is suffering but it’s not anybody’s fault. It was inevitable. And you know what that means? There’s nobody to blame, there’s no way to stop it, parents who have had difficulties in life will always abuse their kids and children will just have to suck it up because that’s life.

Well then, what about me? And others like me? We’ve been brutalized by our parents severely, we haven’t known anything except neglect and pain and hatred, and would never do it to another living soul on earth, much less a child. What are we then? An exception? Are we so much fucking smarter and intelligent and insightful than all the parents on the world that we figured this out? Are we special cases? Are we miracles? How come our parents couldn’t have figured out what we have, that hurting a child is an act of evil and that we cannot claim to be a good person after we do that? How come something so fucking simple and obvious has eluded all of their eyes over and over again but we know it? How come if everyone abused has no choice but to become a monster themselves, we’re not monsters still? If we could suffer abuse and remain human, why couldn’t they do it to?

We’re the proof that abuse does not produce abusers. Abuse is a choice, every single time a parent abuses a child they’re making a choice to do it. And the easier this choice is to make and get away with, the more abusers we will have. This world is run by abusers and makes it easy for abusers to make that choice, even relives them out of the guilt for choosing that and provides them with many “worse” examples and excuses and rationalizations so they would still feel good about themselves! This world is fighting to continue child abuse, to continue worshipping abusers. This needs to stop, all excuses need to die. All abusers need to be held responsible for their own actions, every single one. No sad backstories, no tragic histories, no debate about how much harder it would be to not abuse a child than to abuse them. If we could make a choice to not abuse others, so can they. Their last excuse is burned to the ground by our existence.

Watch: Poet Porsha Olayiwola heartbreakingly reminds us all that black women’s lives matter too. 

Recognizing Abuse Masterlist

Signs that you’re living in abuse:

Behavioral patterns of living in abuse

Was I abused? Checklist

Not knowing you are a victim

Signs your family is abusive

Making excuses for your abusive parents

Experience of living in secrecy

What they taught you was abuse

Emotional experiences of living in abuse

Shame and guilt: how abused children feel

What makes parents abusers (actions)

Have I been manipulated into believing abuse was my fault? Checklist

Am I being held hostage by abusers? Checklist

You are not allowed to mention the past

Why you still love abusive parents

Parental behaviour that isn’t normal

Shit parents aren’t supposed to say to you

Experience of “not belonging anywhere”

Red flags for abusive parents

Healthy vs Abusive Chores

Was my childhood abusive or just had some bad parts?

Rules always change (unpredictable environment is abusive)

Breakdown of abusive parent’s behaviour:

“This is my house” rule

Start living in the real life!

Why all the children aren’t abused equally in an abusive home

Common abuser hypocrisies

Do your parents want you to be happy or look happy?

Why do they try to convince you that you’re worthless

Why do they pretend you’re a burden? Controlling behaviour

Why your abusers are not good people

Abusive parents are keeping you in false hope they’ll change

Are your parents preventing you from succeeding?

Abusive parents pretending “it wasn’t that bad”

Double Bind (why every choice you make ends wrong)

Incorporating trauma in raising children

Abusers will not allow you to call them out on abuse

Signs your parents are narcissistic:

Stuff delusional narcissists say

Shit narcissistis parents say

Tactics of narcissistic abuse

Recognizing emotional immaturity of narcissistic parents

Examples of narcissistic behaviours

Being punished for growing up by narcissistic parents

What children of narcissists go thru

Signs you’ve been thru sexual abuse:

CSA (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Symptoms

Signs you might have endured CSA

Was I sexually abused by adults as a child? Checklist

Signs of abusive friendship/relationship:

How to tell if a friend is not a friend

Am I in an abusive relationship/friendship? Checklist

Manufacturing insecurities

Red flags for abusers

Have I been thru social abuse? Checklist

You can recognize abusers by how they make you feel

How abusive childhood teaches you to stay in abusive relationships

Recognizing abusive friendship

Signs you’re struggling with trauma

Trauma processing information

Experiences of traumatized children

Signs you’re recovering from long term abuse

Things abuse survivors think/say

Thoughts of victims of child abuse

Your brain on trauma

How long term childhood abuse develops into complex trauma (comic)

Ups and downs of trauma

trauma doesn’t often feel like trauma is ‘supposed’ to feel. it feels like indifferent detachment, watching from outside yourself because nothing can hurt you there. it feels normal, just how people interact, so why are you making a big deal about it?  it feels like a joke – just how kids play, just how adults tease, just how some relationships work.

you wake from nightmares five years later and still wonder if you made it all up.

trauma can look like bad behaviour. like the stubborn refusal to get better, to stop self-destructing. trauma is putting yourself in harm’s way because you don’t really mean it, or because it’s funny, or because you just want to feel something, or because you just want to stop feeling. it’s wanting to destroy and reassemble yourself into another person entirely, so your real life can begin. because this isn’t real. because really bad things don’t happen to people like you.

trauma is the constant feeling of being an impostor. it’s the drive to survive twinned with the impulse to make yourself more sick in more ways. to hurt yourself to prove how bad you feel, or to punish yourself for exaggerating. you want people to believe what you’ve been through, to tell you your feelings are real, that your memories really happened. but when people do take you seriously, you play it off as a joke, apologize for bringing the mood down.

you go on and on about how it wasn’t that bad. you seek permission to still love the ones who hurt you, because it’s the people closest to us who can hurt us most deeply.

you can feel like the people who hurt you are the only ones who really knew you. in low self esteem, you can mistake cruelty for honesty.

there will always be people who have been through worse. that doesn’t make what happened to you okay.

there will always be people who don’t believe you. that doesn’t mean you are lying.

at some point, you have to take yourself seriously. you have to make a life you can stand to live. it’s the only way to survive.

Newest batch of Man-Bat serum wasn't potent enough and Kirk doesn't transform all the way

Inspired by the way @inkdrawndreamer draws Kirk (I just wanted to draw him with those pointy ears tooo!!)

To live, and live safely.

My heart aches for our community and what we've all been facing lately. Please hang in there, everybody.