mosstheboar

[mosstheboar]

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[mosstheboar]

don't give up

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something I don’t get about the disability metaphor is that for eureka monsters obviously it harms another person to eat them. the help a disabled person needs doesn’t actively harm or kill another person. Maybe it’s a difference in perspectives that cannot be resolved

(What I’m about to write could potentially sound very fucked up at first so I’m going to need to trust everyone to read the whole thing before forming an opinion.)

Also this message and response references these two posts.

Eureka’s stance on disabled people is that they (including myself writing this) are, or at least can often be, burdens.

Disabled people often require more resources to live than they are able to “give back,” which, in our capitalist and artificial-scarcity-based economy, is just about the worst thing a person can do.

Anti-ableism sentiment often focuses on the idea that “disabled people aren’t burdens, that they’re just as good and capable as everyone else,” but if they were, they wouldn’t be “disabled” would they? When you say stuff like that, you’re conceding that a person’s worth is determined by how capable they are at doing work, and then having to bend over backwards to justify thinking that a person without arms is just as valuable as a person with arms. Eureka is asking you to decouple a person’s value from how much net resources they can produce.

Often times also, the resources that real disabled people consume are human resources, and those human resources are very much capable of suffering for it. Nurses are overworked, around-the-clock care is absolutely physically and mentally exhausting, people who have to care for their elderly or otherwise disabled relatives on top of their regular jobs don’t get to have social lives or hobbies, etc.

To this end, we wrote the monsters in Eureka to be unquestionably people who “cause damage” to society by literally eating up human resources, because they have to to live, they have no other choice unless they want to just die. Your friend is gone from your life because he has to spend all his free time caring for his comatose wife after a freak car accident. Your friend is gone from your life because a vampire randomly ate him.

And then Eureka forces you to look at these people as people, and make up your mind as to whether they have value and a right to prologue their own existence. We can’t force you to agree that they do, but if you think they don’t, then you’ll have to make that argument looking at an intelligent person with a life rather than a pure hypothetical or statistics on a chart.

There are some monsters in Eureka where, if the economy or societal structures were changed, they would stop being such severe drains on resources and could exist harmlessly within society, and there are some monsters where no imaginable amount of societal change would solve the problems they cause. This is true of disabled people IRL as well. Some of them would require no further assistance with living if certain things about society changed, and others would still require a massive amount of human resources.

And even when it’s not necessarily human resources, the extra resources that disabled people need also cause huge energy expenditure and create huge amounts of plastic waste, which are things that contribute to global warming and pollution, which do have significant harmful effects on everyone’s lives. Despite this, they are still “worth it” to keep around.

As for actively causing harm, that happens too. I randomly scrolled past this post after we got this message and saved it so I could link it here.

This person and their family had to cause a big stink in a restaurant just to get an accommodation that they needed, and to us reading it from their perspective, we’re obviously on their side, but I can assure you that the overworked staff at that restaurant didn’t see it that way. They saw the disabled person as an aggressive Karen whom they would never in a million years want to have to provide customer service to. The disabled person & family had to get aggressive, and ruin the staff’s day, to get what they needed. That’s actively causing harm - harm we all agreed was justified to cause - but harm nonetheless.

Plastic straws aren’t that big of a deal for global pollution, but even if they were, the point is that this person still would have needed a straw. It doesn’t line up one-to-one, because metaphors rarely do, but a vampire asking if they can drink someone’s blood, and being told No, may find themselves in much the same position. (And if you bring up that some people find vampires really sexy, you’re missing the point. “I would give them a straw if they had sex with me.” is not actually a great thing to announce about yourself.)

I can also come up with an example from my own life. I personally am very sensitive to noise and noise pollution. If there’s music playing at a public space, I usually can’t handle it. (Earplugs don’t work for other reasons I won’t get into - plus, if I just deafen myself to all sound, how can I socialize with anyone in this public space?)

If I want to exist in this space, I will have to actively cause harm to everyone there, or else stop existing in that space. I will have to go up to whoever is responsible and ask them to turn off the music, actively taking it away from everyone else who was enjoying it. I have to take action to ruin their good time if I want to exist in that space at all, and they might, very understandably, be pissed off at me for doing that. Because, like I said in this other post, the people that monsters eat do have a right to prevent themselves from being eaten by monsters. We aren't proposing that the solution is everyone has to line up to be mauled to death by monsters or else they're a bad person.

Who has a greater right to enjoy themselves in that space? That’s the kind of question that Eureka poses, and makes you consider both sides as human being rather than denoting one as just an ontologically evil villain to be destroyed.

We actually don't know of perfect solutions to all the problems presented by the existance of monsters in Eureka, we just know that "exterminate all people who are parasites and burdens to society" ain't it.

[mosstheboar]

DROPOUT TV BASED AS ALWAYS

Plaintext:

We've seen people saying that Dropout is platforming Zionists recently, and we feel it is important to respond. Where Dropout stands is here: Israel is committing genocide against Palestine, and the people of Palestine deserve to be free and safe.

To our knowledge, no individual who has appeared on Dropout has openly identified as a Zionist. Several of those accused have expressed to us their support for a free Palestine. We believe in granting grace for people to become informed and grow, and that views espoused by someone in the past do not always reflect the ones they hold today. If there are individuals who perpetuate speech and values that go against Dropout's values, they will not be invited back.

There are representatives in government who hold the power to stop funding and arming Israel's genocide against Palestinians. There are advocacy groups and charities working towards a ceasefire and saving Palestinian lives. We ask that everyone focus their energy where it can make the most meaningful difference towards ending the genocide.

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On top of bombardment, the death toll and atrocities in Gaza compound every minute as supplies, aid, and food are denied by the Israeli government. Every minute of delay means more lives lost and countless futures shattered. We are donating $25,000 [USD] to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund immediately, bringing our total donations to over $200,000, and are planning another Dimension 20 minis fundraiser early next year to benefit a Palestine-focused charity. We encourage everyone to look into what you can give and reach out to your representatives in government to demand a ceasefire immediately.

It is easy to feel hopeless, but every day more people are educating themselves and joining the coalition dedicated to ending the genocide and the occupation. The people of Palestine have not given up hope despite everything, so neither can we. Hopefully there is a ceasefire soon and the process of healing and rebuilding can begin.

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Let's do everything we can to bring about the day when the people of Palestine will be free and safe and prosperous.

Additional resources to support the people of Palestine (note that the clickable links included in this post were also included in the original text of Dropout's post):

Demand a Ceasefire in Gaza:

https://ceasefiretoday.com/

Palestine Children's Relief Fund:

https://www.pcrf.net/

UNRWA:

https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page/en_EN

UNICEF:

https://www.unicef.org/emergencies/children-gaza-need-lifesaving-support

Gaza eSIMs:

https://www.connecting-humanity.org

End of Plaintext.

by the way, would anyone like to match my total $20 CAD ($14.40 USD) donation to UNICEF and the PCRF? anything would be greatly appreciated <3

[mosstheboar]

Maelstrom

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gone fishin'

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Calder Moore

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I drew this little frog baby 🐸🐸

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*stares back more starier to assert dominance*

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Thy will be done

🕯 🕯 🍰 🕯🕯

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Image: Mr. Croak from Steam Community Workshop

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[mosstheboar]

Did You Know: The scribs care about you? If you wait around in the wilderness, one may stop by to see how you are doing. This interrupts your waiting, but they will not be hostile.

[mosstheboar]

To The Person Who Was Sitting Near Me On The Train - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is out Nov 7th and is available to pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky