flameswallower

[flameswallower]

also tbh. abled people have this notion... this underlying presumption that self awareness can overcome (developmental) disability. like if you are in any way able to communicate well, introspect, or come across as an actual person in their eyes, then they think your developmental disability shouldn't ever be disabling. like you know what to do and not to do so why are you screaming or hitting things or shutting down or whatever. it's really those "i think therefore i am" bastards like think the only way someone can be or act developmentally disabled is if they have no ability to understand that what they're doing is abnormal or whatever. i think in some ways this overlaps with how ableds see pwID and the way they tie "intelligence" to every other sort of developmental ability like adaptive functioning or executive functioning or emotional regulation. but i have a developmental disability and not an intellectual disability so i wouldn't know how to really get into it.

[flameswallower]

haters do not want you to know this but if you pick up something heavy every day it will eventually stop being quite as heavy. this is because the heavy thing, having witnessed your dedication, begins to yield its essence to you. and you, in turn, begin to absorb that essence into your own being. this is what makes people strong. the more essence you absorb, the stronger you become, and the more respect you command from the world around you.

[flameswallower]

life could be a fucking dream!!!!!!

[flameswallower]

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[flameswallower]

"The word pandemonium was coined by John Milton as the name for the Parliament of Hell" is an all-timer etymology. Oh yeah did you hear that Mrs Higgins's dogs got loose at the village fête? It was like a vast golden edifice in which fallen angels debate their strategies for vengeance against god, yeah.

[flameswallower]

[flameswallower]

Mauro Ariel Koliva — Serie "Infrarock" (ballpoint pen & gel ink, canvas, 2017)

[flameswallower]

One of those insidious little things I notice sometimes is how much the window of 'appropriate for children' content has shrunk within the past 20 years. The range of things it is socially acceptable to show a 10-year-old has never been more limited, and it's happened incredibly quickly.

Take, for instance, Star Trek: TNG. I grew up watching TNG. I was a little young for it as it was airing, but it got syndicated almost immediately and they would show an episode most weekday evenings on the Space Channel, and I'd watch it with my lifelong Trekkie mom. This was a very common thing. I was by no means unusual for watching Star Trek as a child.

Star Trek: TNG has lots of sex in it! It's never explicit (unless you have a particularly niche interpretation of some of the borg stuff) but on many an occasion you'll have a few characters doing a bit of making out followed by a closing door or fade to black, and then they wake up in bed together. If you know what sex is, you know that is what is being implied here. Even my 8-year-old self, whose understanding of the subject mostly came from books of ancient mythology that used words like 'ravish' and 'the pleasures of the couch' a whole bunch, could tell that what was happening was sex.

And I am not bringing this up as a 'see, I watched all this inappropriate stuff and I turned out just fine!'. I'm bringing it up to argue that TNG's level of sexual content is not inappropriate for children (I'm not using the legalese 'minors', because I think that lumping children and teenagers together in this conversation would make it nonsense. Star Trek is obviously appropriate for teenagers. Don't use 'minors' when you mean either children or teens, it just muddies the waters).

The point is that Star Trek: TNG was very obviously designed to be watched by children and teenagers. There's a whole character in the main cast whose role in the show is to be an audience insert for children and teenagers. The moral tone of TNG, its occasional dips into 'don't do drugs, kids' type messaging, and its general avoidance of graphic violence all scream 'we are designing this with an audience of children - but not just children - in mind'. It's a family show. It's supposed to be watched by the whole family.

Which means that, until at least the end of the 90s, this amount of sexual content was generally considered appropriate for kids to see. It's not pornographic - it's not even graphic. Maybe the very most conservative parents wouldn't let their kids watch TNG, but that might have had more to do with all the socialism and atheism.

So, why did that change? Why do we now have such a strong bullwark between 'things kids are allowed to know about' and 'things for GROWN UPS ONLY 18+ Minors DNI', and why have we relegated even the most discreet references to sex to the second category only?

And the next time you find yourself experiencing that knee-jerk 'think of the children' reaction, consider: would what you're looking at have been ok on Star Trek: TNG in the 90s?

[flameswallower]

I drew my friend cate at her job because retail fucking sucks

[flameswallower]

children are so fucking funny man. i just overheard a kid go “i just learned a new way to pinch, wanna see it? it hurts a lot more!” followed by a loud, notably pained scream

[flameswallower]

Found footage movies that get turned into a series of found footage movies are always so funny. We keep buying cameras and the guys keep getting eaten by ghosts and I said well its seems like you're just feeding journalists to the monsters and then my producer started crying

[flameswallower]

I was about to write a long post about how people are too quick to jump to bad faith assumptions and really out of pocket/baseless attacks on the character of others when they see a politely phrased but clearly kind of ignorant/naive opinion online instead of politely explaining to the other person that they are speaking in naive ignorance and here’s why it is that blah blah blah, and how I think this tendency is responsible for a lot of “discourse wars,” people feeling constantly attacked/persecuted or like they “aren’t allowed” to express opinions, etc.

However, I checked the blog of the person whose (anonymized) post I was going to use as a case study, and it turns out they’re a very smug, not-as-smart-as-they-clearly-think-they-are SWERF with a whole bunch of bad takes, very much guilty of bad faith character bashing and strawmanning their own discursive opponents, and now I too am irritated with them and, probably unfairly, imagining them in all sorts of unflattering ways (“this person obviously doesn’t know any actual sex workers, and they probably think they’re too good to be friends with a sex worker,” and so on)

[flameswallower]

Issey Kang

Untitled hand 1,

nail varnish, Pom Pom, dyed matchsticks

15 x 7 cm

[flameswallower]

It's a good thing I didn't have to self-publish this collection of short stories! Although they are not fetish erotica by most definitions of the term (except for one or two stories), it looks like they could still fall afoul of these new content restrictions itch. io has implemented due to pressure from payment processors!

Find the book here.

[flameswallower]

stoned and autistic at a party trying to make conversation: I find the comparative lifespan of organisms so interesting. Spiders are comparatively long lived animals. Female black widows can live up to 3 years but their male counterparts rarely live four months. Some tarantulas live upwards of 20 years. The longest lived spider was around 43 years old when she was cruelly assassinated by a parasitic wasp. Domestic rats have a lifespan comparable to female black widows. To put things into perspective, there are spiders that remember a pre-pandemic world but it is likely every rat on earth was born post-COVID. There could be a spider out there born when Reagan was in office.

[flameswallower]

I hate when a tiny stupid thing pushes you over the edge and makes you freak the fuck out because it makes you look like a completely irrational tar pit of a human being. Like no I promise this is warranted just maybe not about that specifically I swear I'm well adjusted. Come closer stick your fingers in my cage

[flameswallower]

I think teens need to be able to go to trusted adults and say “I saw something in a porn video that freaked me out and now I’m worried I’ll have to do it too” and then the adult can say “it’s ok to be nervous about sex, but remember that you don’t have to do ANYTHING you don’t want to do, ever, no exceptions” and this should be an ongoing conversation to remind young people that sexual desire isn’t monolithic and they are not uniquely weird, cowardly, or undesirable for expressing their feelings, and they deserve sexual partners who prioritize consent & autonomy always