#fucking behave yourselves

[vaspider]

[no advice, no platitudes. give me either on this post & I'll yeet you into the fucking sun]

Survivor's guilt fucking sucks.

It sucks even if it takes you nearly eleven years and the death of a second friend before you realize you're carrying it around. Or maybe just admit that you're carrying it around.

I got the benign intradural extramedullary ependymoma in my spine. Ginny got the aggressive metastatic cancer in hers. I had surgery and kept walking. She fucking died.

Why her? Why her and not me?

I was stupid levels of in love with her. A lot of people were. It was hard not to be.

So why one of the singularly most lovable people on the planet and not the fucking pain in the ass? (Don't, okay? I know I'm harder to get along with than she ever was. It's the truth. You don't help or flatter me by denial.)

She died on April 23. On May 9th, I almost died three times in recovery from the surgery that removed the Evil Grape from the sheath of my spinal cord. My blood pressure crashed repeatedly, and in a recovery room that I remember as being pitch black, she came to visit me. At the time, that seemed completely normal. I didn't question it. Of course she was here. Where else would she be?

I was dying, and Ginny was there. Of course.

We talked for a long, long time. She got up to go, and I tried to get up and go with her, and she told me I couldn't. I didn't understand because I didn't remember then that she was dead.

I still don't understand why she died and I lived. I still don't understand why Kep died and I'm still here.

It's not fucking fair. Why did I get a dodge and they didn't? Why am I still breathing and they're not?

I know there are no Reasons. That doesn't mean I don't keep asking myself in the dark and quiet.

So yeah. Survivor's guilt is a bitch. It's helped a little bit when one of the people who Gets It more than anyone else in the world happens to message you right after you lose your shit at The Longest Johns' version of Wild Mountain Thyme and end up sobbing into a sink full of dirty dishes, but it still fucking sucks.

In nine days, it'll be 11 years.

[banana-themed-url]

Not to sound like a boomer but if you’re going to sit in the audience for something, please practice some basic etiquette

[dedmau]

fan art i drew of wally dying in a glue trap

[85-rend]

They look different every time I draw them huh

[daily-hanamura]

[cinnbar-bun]

Anons coming off since some of yall just can’t behave. Cant believe in a source material like One Piece I got idiots on my inbox saying some of the most rancid shit.

Sorry to those who get nervous but yeah, I’m tired. I don’t care anymore when for almost months now I’ve gotten disgusting messages by cowardly anons.

[scientistservant]

I don’t want anyone saying Kaa is feral now that we have the EXACT SAME THING in the new blue danger noodle character in the Zootopia 2 teaser (ie, talking snake with no clothes)

[fitfullycoexisting]

Some of y’all are getting too comfortable on the internet. Show some restraint, please, for the love of fuck. AIDS jokes and other stuff (iykyk) are very clearly not accepted within this community and you shouldn’t expect anything but a negative reaction towards it. Either because it’s a real issue that people suffer with, or because it’s just gross and no one wanted to read that with their own two godforsaken eyes (the latter, not the former).

I mean it when I say every day this fandom strays farther away from the light of god (or whatever entity exists). It makes it incredibly difficult to come back and make content when you know in the back of your mind, there’s this newly added weight to being associated with it. So for the love of god or whatever you do or don’t believe in, at least fucking think before you post.

[red-revival]

Regular reminder that seems needed rn. Antisemitism does not help anyone. You can in fact criticize israel without being shitty to jews. The freedom and safety of one oppressed people should not be at the cost of another.

Stop calling random jews zionist for talking about antisemitism, don't conflate an entire culture and religion with one countries government, and stop calling jews nazis(what is fucking wrong with you).

[mymarifae]

encountered some truly terrifying things on twitter today so can we all just look at how cute my 8 beautiful children are. and appreciate them. and love them.

[rabbiteclair]

putting behind a cut because it's technically a book 8 spoiler

happy to report that the 'Kasumi moves in with Kozakura' stuff that I wrote before book 8 managed to pretty accurately predict most of what it'd be like

except, of course, for Jack the Pisser

[blusical]

oh and by the way. please be careful when looking through the #nascar tag.

[hawkzeyes]

Me, gripping tightly at the ground, seeing people mock the songs and ballads aspect of Lucy singing in Songbirds and Snakes by calling it cringe, knowing what the roots of district 12 are based around and exactly how impactful music is in that region and culture

[pearwaldorf]

When I was a kid, every word that flowed from J. K. Rowling’s pen wrote magic into my world, but now every word she puts out just hurts my heart. Every homophobic or transphobic thing queer kids hear growing up becomes a voice that follows them for a long time. We hear relatives, friends, and parents say awful things about us and to us. For a lot of us, we fight those voices every day. When one of those voices comes from the author who taught you about accepting yourself, a person you thought truly saw you and kids like you, it hurts in a way I honestly hope she never understands. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I don’t hate her. It would honestly be easier if I did. Inside me somewhere, there’s a kid who still loves her despite everything. That kid has a lot of experience loving people who hurt her. She never asks why; she just wants to know what she did wrong and how she can fix it. It’s hard to tell her there’s nothing left to fix.

--Jaina Grey, Review: There Is No Magic in Hogwarts Legacy

This made me cry. Deep, heaving, snotty, undignified shit. It reminds me of another extraordinary piece of writing, also about another kind of intimate betrayal:

I picked up [my mentor's book] from my bookshelf and read and re-read that section. I felt a number of things. The strangest, most immediate was a version of pride. The man whose approval I had always wanted had decided I was good enough to rip off. I was sitting, with Fitzgerald, in the library in his head; my writing, like Tolstoy’s, had stuck with him, somewhere deep, and he had turned to it when he wanted to say something that he couldn’t say.

...

It hurt, and I was angry for what had happened to me and other writers – the way our labour had been co-opted, and not appropriately cited. Lots of people can imagine that hurt, I assume. But I can’t imagine that many other people understand the way it felt good, too.

These are linked to me because they are about how we grapple with treachery from people who we have loved, perhaps still do, but have done us severe? grievous? deep harm. It's a tricky subject, and I am thankful there are people who can discuss it with such eloquence, thought, and grace.

At this point I don't think there's much I personally can say that will convince you to do or not do something re: the wizard game. It's not my job to make you feel better about something you probably know isn't right in your heart of hearts, or make you confront the gap between your stated ideals and concrete actions. I also think talking about playing the game in public means you have to accept the consequences that come with that.

I do hope you reflect on your relationship with the corpus of work and its author as much as these writers have, because I think you owe them and yourself at least that much.

[sysmedsaresexist]

are they seriously calling CDDs fascists. for wanting to talk about being traumatised. to other systems with trauma. i’m at a loss for fucking words

Oh yeah, I missed getting mad about that part, though OP mostly apologized and seems open to hearing why that's fucked up, so in my opinion, this conversation is actually going pretty good so far!

But yeah, it did say that

[nightfall-1409]

sometimes i do in fact just balk at how ppl engage with and around discussions of disability and ableism.

Like ofc, being mindful of language is a nice thing and we should all strive to be nicer but if thats where your advocacy ends thats not great and further, imo esp amongst the disabled people I know just leads to non disabled individuals policing the jokes disabled people make.

implying that disabled characters 'should be' depicted as inferior to their nondisabled counterparts. That's ableism, Textbook ableism according to the APA. Discussions abt how the suffering of disabled characters should be always be central in narratives about them. That's ableism. (especially when its portrayed something that can be overcome.)

condoning disgust and shock responses to physical disabilities as "they're just thinking about themselves and thinking about what if what happened to you happened to them or someone they love". Is so ableist that I still cannot believe that I had to read it

The framing of disability as tragedy or something to be horrified at. Even if you think that saying "Well they're not disgusted by you they're disgusted thinking about if it happened to them" makes it better. It really doesn't, I think it makes it worse. "Well you're already disabled so who gives a shit. What if I, a normal person had that happen to me?" type vibes.

The consistent use of the medical model with characters with disability, where disability is something to be cured or corrected, with a mind to making a character "more normal" (i've also seen this phrased as "make them more human" which is particularly disgusting on top of deeply fucking ableist). This is also a highlight of the APA's discussion around ableism.

And to be clear: I don't go out of my way to yell at people when I see this stuff and I don't think others should either. I don't think that's helpful or productive. I take note of it, sure, especially if I've seen them make shitty comments before, and I might bitch about it out of context to fellow disabled friends, but I don't want to endorse callout culture or posting, it's unkind and imo most people don't want to perpetrate these sorts of attitudes, they're simply societal norms that they've never questioned, and I don't want trying to correct this issue to spiral into accusations of people being awful and spiking off defensiveness.

From Leah Smith's Article on Ableism on the Center for Disability Rights' website

Just like most forms of discrimination, ableism often shows its ugly face from nondisabled people with good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions never solved any problems. So let’s put our good intentions aside and get to the root of what’s really going on. I believe much of ableism rests on the medical model of disability, in that we have first come to understand disability through the lens of a doctor- something is ‘wrong’ with this person and that ‘something’ needs to be fixed. This is how we are taught to think about disability. However, where we have interpreted the word “wrong” is where we have gone wrong. Just because something is different, does not mean it is bad. We live in a culture in which we have entire television series’ on the medical complications of different types of disabilities. [...] The best way to de-root ableism in our everyday lives, is to ensure that there’s always a seat at the table for those who are like you and those who are not, but also checking ourselves on how we treat people with disabilities once they are at the table. As simple as this sounds, de-rooting ableism is often as simple as just treating disabled people like you would anyone else.

And from NPR's "How to Talk About Disability and Avoid Ableist Tropes"

"Many disabled people subscribe to the social model of disability, which sees disability as the result of the interaction between people living with disabilities and an environment filled with physical, attitudinal, communication and social barriers. While it doesn't deny the reality that comes with living with a disability or the impact it has on an individual, it emphasizes the need for social change in order to accommodate disabled people." "The social model says that a disability is not my inherent problem and that something isn't inherently wrong with me as a person. I think it's more of the community aspect and how you can have diversity in your culture, versus the medical [model] of, like, you have to be fixed, you have to blend in with the norm and this is how we're going to do that to fix you," said McDonnell-Horita. The disability pride movement stemmed from the social model of disability, as it frames disability as a cultural identity and a natural part of human diversity. Disabled people have used pride to affirm the self-worth and agency of disabled individuals and as a tool for combating systemic ableism.

I've got faith that this doesn't have to be the way things remain. I do.