random thought of the afternoon

Rorschach is like Batman, except for the crazy neo-Nazi everything-phobic political views.

Probably explains why his manners are so a) hilarious and b) endearing: "I'm Batman. I don't enjoy anything."

us visit update

Wax has confirmed time off, but because of the economic situation, we have to borrow money for the transatlantic flights from her mom (buying early, Finland to Kansas City is only about €700 apiece, which is I guess the second cheapest I've ever flown across the Atlantic; but then FinnAir has been slashing their prices kind of a lot recently, offering incredibly cheap deals provided you buy the tickets at the right time. Just trying not to go out of business, I guess). €1400 for both of us: that's why I've only seen my parents three times since 2004.

ficsearch/request: leverage

I've combed delicious for Leverage OT3 (Eliot/Hardison/Parker) stories, but didn't find more than, I guess, about five or six stories (including especially an awesome one by zvi_likes_tv and the one brown_betty is cowriting but hasn't finished yet). Is this representative, or is there more? Can anyone point me to a source?

ETA: Have discoverated the ot3 comm whitepawns, but I'm still after other sources of recs (or just recs).

sneakers of the day

Converse All Stars in plaid and a Keds Studio design called "flower doodle" by tadomeku.

miriam heddy & stoneself on silence and listening

miriam_heddy has made a post about silence and listening called Linking to Listen: Some thoughts on listening while white.

How do we know when people are shutting up? Well, we can tell by their silence.

But how do we know that they're listening? Ah, well that second part is trickier.
In person, we can tell someone is listening by their expression and body language, even when they don't say a word.

Online, listening is invisible unless we speak and say, "Thank you" or "I heard that" or "This!"

So we have hit upon a conundrum.

This articulated a lot of the thoughts I've been having as I've seen more and more public and protected posts in the last few days about silence vs speaking out, from several angles. Some posts about this that I am not free to link to publically have really stirred me emotionally; there will always be silence, and silence is not inherently bad, but it's increasingly clear that speaking out in defense of silence can easily get ugly, even unintentionally.

I've seen stoneself quoted a few places now saying

it isn't that silence equals consent. that's a really stupid stance.
silence has an effect.
the inertia of things is in one direction.
silence maintains the course of inertia.

stoneself has here articulated clearly the intent of "silence equals consent" as a slogan. It means that those who are silent appear to be one with the group of all others who are silent - and there is no way to measure who out of that group isn't happy with where we are. Only people who speak out can be identified and heard and counted. An institution, such as racism, is always the status quo; the point of "silence equals consent" to my mind is simply that, to remind us that the status quo is the default, and that trying to change an institution is a big undertaking, and that problematising the institution is an important step that requires many voices. (Thus "Three people spoke out for the way things are, and three people spoke out against them" can easily appear to be "Only three people spoke out against the s.q.", particularly if the reporter is s.q.-positive.)

(Edited slightly to rewrite last paragraph in an attempt to clarify my point.)