#(i'll add alt text once i have a computer with me)

[accessibleaesthetics]

This poll is screen reader users, including part-time screen reader users and screen reader users who are not blind or low vision. If you are not part of this group, please feel free to reblog to increase sample size!

For the purpose of this poll, "screen reader" refers to any program that verbally reads out all content on the screen (text, alt text, button names, menu options, etc.), as opposed to programs that are strictly text-to-speech (those will be covered in a separate poll).

If you have never used a screen reader but still would like to know the results, please feel free to message me. I'll add you to a list of people to tag once the poll is done. That way, you don't have to worry about finding it again yourself!

[idoodlestuffsometimes]

Hello

Would you be willing to add the descriptive text underneath the brothers keeper AU pictures? My computer is not allowing me to know what the photos say.

Oof sorry for that issue. My compromise lately has been to put shorter descriptions of simple drawings under the pic and the description for comics in the ALT text because they're so dang long. But I gather that's still an issue, huh.

I guess I can start putting it under a read more? I know that's annoying in its own right, but they're so long I don't know what else to do

As for the most recent story post, I'm afraid I can't currently mess with it because it's at the center of an open ticket with tumblr support staff. If you've noticed the original post acting funky, with various pieces disappearing or reappearing, including the ALT text, that's why. I was trying to fix a technical issue myself before getting staff involved. I will have to look into adjusting the image description once the ticket is resolved. The ALT text should be functioning for now, but that doesn't mean it always plays nice with everyone's devices, so for now, I'll post the description here:

[IMAGE ID: Page one of a black and white comic for the Brother's Keeper Owl House AU. PANEL 1: In the foreground, Belos' gauntleted hand grasps the arm of his throne. "Emperor Belos!" Calls Kikimora. At the far end of the throne room, she enters through the enormous door with Caleb in his wheelchair. PANEL 2: "I have brought Lord Metanoy to answer your summons," she says. Her clothes and hair are in disarray, marred by tooth marks, and her expression is exasperated. Beside her Caleb is pristine in a formal tunic and half-cape, mirroring Belos' robes. He sits with arms crossed, glowering. PANEL 3: Belos, wearing his horned mask, sits on his throne atop a raised dais at the end of a long carpet. The throne room is cavernous and filled with pipes and clockwork. Scouts line the room, standing at attention. Off to one side, one of the scouts is pushing a cart bearing a crystal ball. Kikimora and Caleb stop before the throne. "Very good. You are dismissed," says Belos. "And take all the guards with you; I want to be alone with my brother." Kikimora bows. "Of course, Emperor Belos." PANEL 4: "Giving Kikimora trouble again I see," Belos says, his eyes behind his mask looking vaguely annoyed. Caleb shrugs. "I don't know what you mean. Any good assistant should know that madmen bite." Behind them, the scouts leave through the door, leaving behind the cart bearing the crystal ball.

PANEL 5: "I hope you had a good reason to have your little lapdog lackey drag me all the way down here." Caleb complains, glowering over his shoulder, presumably at Kikimora's back. Belos is standing up now and raising his staff, casting a spell. "Hmm," he says. /End ID] [Image ID: Page two. PANEL 1: Caleb looks up as the ripples of the spell pass over his head. "A silence spell? What did you bring me here for that you don't want overheard?" PANEL 2: "There was highly unusual visitor at the Coven Convention today," answers Belos. He is walking down the stairs to his throne to join Caleb below. Caleb is twisted in his chair to watch the crystal ball, which has just turned on. It is projecting an image in the air of Perry Porter announcing a news report. "Extra excitement today at this year's Coven Convention with the outbreak of, not one, but TWO witch's duels!" exclaims Perry. "The second duel was a battle between Head Coven Leader Lilith Clawthorne and the Owl Lady." PANEL 3: A close-up of Caleb, unhappy. "The Clawthorne sisters fought?" "However," continues Perry off-screen, "the true interest lies with the FIRST duel." PANEL 4: "Reports confirm that one of the two duelists was not a witch at all, but a HUMAN." The projected image shows Luz, nervous, fists clenched, at the center of the convention center arena. PANEL 5" "A HUMAN?!" cries Caleb. His eyes have gone wide with shock. Belos stands beside him. "After all these years, another human on the Boiling Isles," he says, "And there's something else." /End ID]

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats - “Berbils”

Written By: Leonard Starr

The ThunderCats meet some weird friends.

(I would, and should, have completed this during the weekend, but ThunderCats reviews were one of the last things on my mind the last few days. Of course, with all this extra time I have now, I had no excuse to not complete it yesterday. If this ends up published unfinished, which it is if this text is still here, please be patient.)

The episode begins with Mumm-Ra the Ever Living proving his tagline, by emerging from his tomb. Sure, he's not the muscular blue guy that Skeletor could look up to anymore, but he's still willing. He talks to himself, and the audience, about how he's going to make sure that Eye of Thundara is "accidentally destroyed." That will be a thing he's doing throughout the episode, as the Mutants of Plun-Darr don't even make an appearance here.

As Mumm-Ra looks on with his magical pool, we see that Panthro has made a Thunder Tank out of the scraps of the ship. Last week's Cool Toy was the Claw Shield, and this week's new Cool Toy is the Thunder Tank, something he had been teasing since the last episode. While Panthro is gloating about how he's the champion scrounger of the universe, the sky turns dark and stones start falling.

WilyKat: Stones, my whiskers! These are boulders!

They don't even have whiskers. At least, not drawn ones.

In the end, this just turns into an advertisement for the Thunder Tank, complete with some rock music for the rock digging. It can protect Panthro from the rock storm! It can dig through rocks! It can dig out scrapped spaceships! It's only $99.99 at Kay Bee Toys!

After the ThunderCats are saved by the Cool Toy of the Week, which only makes a small appearance at the end of the episode, Tygra theorizes this storm could not be natural. They don't seem to investigate who or what caused it, and it never comes up again. It's actually not that clear if it was Mumm-Ra caused it, with only a very slight implication in the intro, though it would be a good guess. I'd imagine being able to summon ston, er boulder storms at will would be a good ability to use constantly.

Meanwhile, Lion-O and Snarf are doing another look in the nearby forest, though Snarf is only following Lion-O and warning him that he's straying too far from the camp. Lion-O shrugs him off, telling him to stay back if he's scared. Not even 5 seconds from his appearance in this episode, Snarf is already being told to stay back. Lion-O tells him he'd jump at his own shadow, and Snarf then proves it by doing just that, proving that he probably should stay back. Ah, the comic relief.

The next scene will try to add a little more to Snarf's character besides, "Snarf Snarf you shouldn't be doing this", and "Snarf Snarf I'm hungry": he can run around beasts that looked like they were just standing there and can cut vines with his teeth. The latter comes in handy when Lion-O falls into a hole. A very, very slippery hole, he says, giving us a hint that this is more than just something caused by a natural or Mumm-Ra-caused disaster.

Snarf tries his best to get him out of the hole, but Lion-O simply can't do it. Emphasis on "try", though not because of him. The hole is also really slippery, and Lion-O can't figure out why he can't. Both Snarf and Lion-O get lassoed multiple times by some mysterious strangers made partially of metal.

In the same year the cartoons based on the Droids and Ewoks from Star Wars came out, ThunderCats came up with a combination of the two. While they can seemingly speak English, they speak in the same manner as the computer from WarGames. Unfortunately, as he's lassoed up, he can't summon the ThunderCats because he can't grasp his sword. The episode even cuts to the other ThunderCats talking about how Lion-O must be okay because he didn't do that. Panthro justifies their lack of caring because...

Panthro: No sense worrying, he's a man now.

Did you forget what Tygra said in the last episode? Well, he did manage to defeat that Mumm-Ra guy once, so he must be okay. Of course, he isn't, as he ends up getting tied to a stake. Lion-O tries to communicate with them by calling them "whatever they are", and they say "Berbil." Berbil? They look more like bears to me. Cute little Care Bears...

...no, wait, sorry! Put that knife away! I'm also sorry I accidentally called you Bergins before I edited that post! I don't know why I did, I really didn't like Trolls! Honest!

No, just kidding, Ro-Bear-Bill, as he eventually names himself, uses that knife to cut the rope. Apparently, trapping people and tying them to stakes is their way of saying "hi". They really just went from "one step away from roasting him over an open fire" to "future friend" in just one minute. Then again, I can imagine Third Earth can do that to people, with those rock storms and all.

We get a brief glimpse of their home village, which look surprisingly similar to another 80's cartoon's village. For a desolate planet, these guys seem to be living okay. There's just one problem.

We eventually had to get some evil dog-men in this series about Thunderous Felines, but they're not going to fight the ThunderCats. Instead, they're going after the Ro-Bear's supply of food. The Ro-Bears do have a line of defense: stun bullets fired via little tubes, as if they’re pelting them with spitballs. They’re just as effective as that analogy sounds, as even they admit that it does nothing. Lion-O is not impressed by this.

Lion-O, in an attempt to finally do something about this constant struggle. They just run away after this. That was a really short battle, but Ro-Bear Bill seems to have an opinion that may not be mine.

Ro-Bear-Bill: My my! That certainly was exciting, Lion-O!

Whatever you say, Ro-Bear-Bill.

Ro-Bear Bill decides to tell Lion-O that they know why they have to steal the Berbil berries: because they have to give them to the Giantors, who will give them their food in exchange for the berries. Now, the Giantors will be angry! This is partially why I hate these kinds of lateral thinking puzzles, they suddenly bring in details they never talk about.

Also, are these guys 100% human? Sure, they're bigger and are probably more Homo Erectus than Sapien. I guess if there's mutant monkeys, as proven by Monkian, mutant humans shouldn't be too far off.

Lion-O uses the Sword of Omen's Sight Beyond Sight, and, sure enough, he sees that those Giantors are angry. They want those berries, dammit!

Lion-O: I can probably handle them myself!

Snarf: Snarf, snarf! No, please, call the other ThunderCats! (clasping his hands, praying he won't try to take on a bunch of giants by himself)

Lion-O: Well, okay, just to please you.

Even when Snarf has a decent idea, he has to be told off. He decides not to try to do it himself this time. I would like to think that even if Lion-O took care of the bad guys last time, he realized he really lucked out with a villain that hates reflections.

So the ThunderCats fight the Giantors, and it's better than the last episode's fight scenes. One of the moves involves Panthero looking like he's going to kick one of the Giantors right in the face, but he stops about an inch away. One more inch, and we'd have to invent FV long before the TV rating system even existed!

It eventually ends when Lion-O does that Sword of Omens barrier thing again, and the Giantors don't even try to see if their giant clubs can go through it. Ro-Bear Bill decides not to give a review of the fight he just saw, but does congratulate the ThunderCats for saving their village.

While it seems that the conflict of the episode is over, Mumm-Ra has to do something in this episode after doing that big speech in the beginning. Realizing the Berbils will give the ThunderCats food supply, he decides to attack the Berbils by transforming again. This time, he shows off that he can transform into a swarm of bugs that can also merge into a giant bug, a pretty creative idea. Lion-O fights this bug by riding it like it was one of those mechanical bulls. Either he actually said "yee-haw", or I just imagined it.

Definitely not worthy of a "yee-haw", at least from Lion-O's point of view: the bug then flies off and dissipates back into the swarm, dropping Lion-O into a volcano. Worst of all, the Sword of Omens, which definitely must have something that can help him out here, is just ever so slightly out of his reach. If only Tutorial Jaga was here!

Thankfully, Tutorial Jaga shows up again, this time in the familiar blue aura he usually has, to tell him yet another feature of the sword: it can be commanded to go right to Lion-O. This also allows it to fly, leading to a scene where Lion-O is flying out of a volcano, looking like he's being dragged out of there.

But what about Mumm-Ra? Sure, he could just go back and cause some more trouble, but he decided to give up here for some reason. He knows he failed, but he does tell himself, and the audience, that he should do better next time, and time is nothing to him.

In the end, Mumm-Ra just gives up, the ThunderCats are victorious, and the Ro-Bear Berbils give them a banquet to celebrate their saving of the town. They even offer to build the ThunderCats' real estate, which they find the blueprints of. The ThunderCats initially initially refuse, but they insist on building it. After all, friends help friends right after catching them in traps and tying them to a stake.

How does it stack up?

There is a little more world-building here that doesn't entirely revolve around exposition this time. I think I'll give this one a higher rating than the last, even if this does give it the same rating as the first episode. I mean, this is the one with the robotic Care Bear...

Ah! Fine, I'll give it four cats, put the knife away!

Next, those Mutants come back.

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