#i didnt want to be That One Person

[mavigator]

anglerfish 

[bigfatbreak]

“enough rope”

 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 (here) / 6 (in progress)

[op-grand-collection]

[whynotimtired]

The more I think about it the more I like the idea that mike was supposed to be the 4th and final sacrifice and him going to California kicked off every problem that Henry had in his plan, like it was Chrissy, Fred, max, and then mike. The plan was take max out for El and take mike out for Will, by the time they come back to Hawkins for the funerals all the gates are open and Wills mental state is worse for wear and for the first time he's without Mike, his rock. There's no longer anyone to pull him from the brink which makes Will perfect to manipulate and finally get on Henry's side for good. But Mike leaves and he suddenly needs a new number 4 so he finds Patrick and then max, his number 3, finds a loophole so he has to take Patrick instead as 3 and max becomes his final sacrifice. It all worked out in the end for him and Will was still drawn back but the only hitch in his plan is still Mike. He's still alive which means he needs to get rid of him in some way if he's ever going to have a chance to get to Will

[divinesouldariax]

it doesnt have to hurt more to be love!

it doesnt have to hurt more to be love.

there’s been a lot of very good meta about ashton, taking hits, carrying his friends, carrying heavy things for their friends, doing things that hurt, that make it hurt worse, to protect his friends from pain. because he knows how to carry pain. because they’re used to it. because they know he can keep going. because, because, because it’s what he knows, it’s all he knows.

and it’s true. ashton loves them. ashton is willing to hurt more for them, and it’s because they love their friends.

but, but, but. he shouldnt have to. people with chronic pain shouldnt have to do things that make the pain worse. we might choose to, and that is definitely an act of love, but feeling like they dont have a choice, that taking on more pain, silently, suffering without ever asking for help or saying no, i can’t do that, it hurts too much...

because, listen. for most people, chronic pain is limiting. it says no, we’re not climbing those stairs today. no, we can’t lean down and pick something up off the floor. no, we’re staying in bed with a heating pad and telling our friends sorry, i can’t make it today after all. i know you were looking forward to hanging out, but i can’t do it. maybe there’s some people with chronic pain that never have days bad enough that it limits them, but i���ve never met one.

so when i see ashton, whose friends didn’t figure out that he has chronic pain until they literally felt it in his mind, keep their pain under wraps for over a month, never saying no to carrying something (a heavy statue, fcg up a ladder, orym after he fell, laudna’s dead body for miles), swinging his hammer to defend and protect, literally picking losing battles to see if anybody is watching...to me, that doesn’t read as “look at this strong, empowered person with chronic pain who never lets it limit them”.

to me, that says “this is a person who thinks that love cannot exist without a worsening of pain, who won’t let themself pause or say no or even tell anybody that it hurts because he is deeply, deeply afraid that refusing pain is the same thing as denying his friends love”.

and that’s fucking devastating.

it doesnt have to hurt more to be love.

[risingsunresistance]

blood god techno... drippy :]

[spookberry]

“Anything here can kill you, but I can do it most efficiently”

holiday truce gift for @rosiepupper, I think I went off book on your prompt a little so I hope you like it anyways!! 

[epitome-of-an-openbook]

To all the people out there who mock queer ships and headcannons for stranger things and say "it can't be gay, its set in the 80s" or "gay people didn't exist in the 80s" i just need you all to know the following:

The 80s were gay, the 80s were SO gay. You think that the campiest decade of all time was straight??? You are simply wrong. The 80s were so gay that the US government weaponized incompetence in healthcare specifically to target the queer community, and gay men especially. The 80s were so gay that they decided to name a disease GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) for two whole years as a scare tactic. The 80s were SO gay that Reagan actively decided to default on payments to the WHO during a period of time when they were doing research into what people (in the 80s!!!!) were calling 'the gay plague' or 'gay cancer' because as far as the Reagan administration was concerned HIV/AIDS was a joke. The 80s were so gay that the lgbt community is still recovering from the damages and loss that came from not only HIV/AIDS, but from the homophobic backlash brought about by the purposeful and wilful spread of misinformation regarding it. The 80s were so gay that by 1988 AIDS was the third leading cause of death for men between the ages of 25-44 years of age, and 59% of those deaths were happening among gay or bisexual men (because the government chose not to act for basically seven straight years). Between 1981 and 1990 over 100,000 people died Because the government didn't want to help the MANY gay people that were being affected.

Like I don't give a f#ck if you don't like a gay ship or headcannon but I do give a f#ck about you erasing queer history and trauma as a way to argue with people about things in some fandom. The AIDS crisis hurt us, and the 80s were f#cking gay.

[ocpdzim]

so ok in deep space nine they HEAVILY code the genetically enhanced people as neurodivergent (imo they all read quite clearly as autistic coded like, specifically, but most of them also seem to have other neurodivergency going on on top of that) and on one hand it kind of really sucks and is one of the biggest fuckups in the show in terms of like. representation. bc it’s sometimes played for some sort of shitty comedy and also plays into the autistic savant stereotype which nobody likes.

however also with that big “THIS KINDA SUCKS” disclaimer out of the way , there’s also some other things about how it’s handled that i want to also discuss bc they’re either interesting or actually good or just fucking weird and the combination of “this is good” and “this sucks” and “what the absolute hell were they even trying to do here” has resulted in me not being able to stop thinking about it.

first of all the number one thing that i think is actually really good about it is the very blatant and obvious “we need neurodivergent doctors for neurodivergent people” subtext that i’m not even sure it’s accurate to call subtext, it may just be text. NEVER have i seen that as a message in any show, the closest i have seen are shows where there’s a neurodivergent doctor but the reason the show considers that great is that the doctor in question can come up with novel ideas for helping neurotypical patients with unrelated issues. but it is really important - we do need neurodivergent doctors!!!! it makes a MASSIVE difference in pretty much the exact way depicted in the episode - neurodivergent doctors treat neurodivergent patients like people and engage with them on their own level and can relate to them and understand what they’re going through. star trek really said “maybe some of these patients who are ~difficult cases~ aren’t actually difficult cases and don’t need some kind of novel special procedure or whatever, they just need someone to fucking respect them for once.” and it extended that compassionate and humanizing perspective to neurodivergent people who had extremely visible and debilitating symptoms. brilliant incredible ahead of its time i just wish that it wasn’t weighed down by other Problems In The Episode. and since i figure i ought to throw in my two cents, i think this is a valuable enough message that it makes up for the flaws of the episode overall even though they are so glaring.

second of all the other thing i think is Actually Really Good about it is bashir being neurodivergent already before augmentation (they pretty much explicitly state he had some sort of learning disability) and how his parents’ attempt to “fix” him was NOT a good parenting move but instead, even though it DID make him fit in more with society and “fix” his symptoms, was a massive violation of his personhood that severely damaged his sense of self and pretty much destroyed his relationship with his parents. they weren’t evil or hateful parents - they really did want what was best for their son - but because of their ableism they couldn’t understand that what he really needed was to be accepted and respected for who he was, and to have his needs accommodated, not to be changed. neurodivergent kids get put through traumatizing and harmful “therapies” by parents who really do love them and would never intentionally harm them just like this all the time in real life. i really liked that his parents were dealt with sympathetically and it was made clear that they really did mean well, but despite that, he didn’t have to accept any justifications for what they’d done and his father ended up facing real consequences for it and accepting that it had been wrong.

this is a continuation of the bit about bashir being neurodivergent already, but i felt it needed a paragraph break - the other thing about the way being augmented by his parents in an attempt to stop him from being neurodivergent impacted bashir as a character that worked really well is that it DIDN’T stop him from being neurodivergent, it stopped him from outwardly appearing neurodivergent super obviously. it’s made very clear that even though he doesn’t have the same symptoms he had as a child, he’s still neurodivergent and instead of freeing him from any kind of burden, the treatments he was subjected to have condemned him to a life of masking forever. once again this is something that is the actual goal of many “therapies” for developmentally disabled people (fuck you aba), AND it’s something that a lot of neurodivergent people end up self-enforcing even if they’ve never been through these abusive therapies. bashir has to hide his neurodivergency to avoid making others uncomfortable and to protect his career, and it takes a clear and painful toll on his wellbeing even though it allows him to become a successful doctor. he makes it very clear he’d have rather lived his life without being forced into this box in the first place, even though now that he’s in the box he doesn’t want to get back out of it since being his authentic self now, after all the years of hiding, would put everything he has at risk. a lot of us do grapple with that and i don’t often see it portrayed at all.

now onto stuff i cannot slot neatly into “this is great” or “this sucks.”

on an actual serious level it is not good but i personally find it extremely hilarious, like as a concept, that in the sci-fi future of star trek, they invented a procedure to give your kid autism and then banned it because it makes your kid smarter and stronger than all the other kids and maybe he’ll take over the world. i’m drafting my world domination plan right now as we speak so watch out, i will destroy the government with my autism beam attack.

i have a lot of mixed feelings about lauren. on one hand, the way she’s written is often very flat and sometimes kind of creepy, and i wish she was dealt with with more nuance and depth. on the other hand, having a character who is not only disabled but institutionalized and nevertheless presenting her as beautiful, sexy, and capable of wanting and having romantic and sexual interactions is kind of nice in the face of the rampant desexualization experienced by disabled people.

the federation’s broad anti-augment stance is interesting in a show that generally presents the federation as being over most other types of discrimination. i think it’s intended to be up for audience interpretation whether the federation policies about augments are good or bad. personally, i think that it’s FLAGRANTLY bad - it isn’t the choice of a child whether to be augmented! it certainly makes sense for the procedure to be illegal considering both the risk of it being used for eugenics and the nature of it as a horribly violating procedure, but the consequences should not fall on the genetically enhanced person, but rather on whoever did that to them. i wish we’d seen more pushback against the federation’s policies and more examination of what they meant for augmented people.

the treason plotline being connected to all this was baffling to me. i am not necessarily against it on a principle level - “neurodivergent people will engage in high stakes treason and espionage in order to solve the world’s most fucked trolley problem” is so silly that it isn’t really a message i’m worried about - but i felt like it wasted the potential of the episode to go in plenty of other, more impactful directions. i would’ve much rather seen it end with the augments and the federation coming up with a better arrangement for their treatment and living situation - either to integrate into mainstream society or to find a way to improve the way they’re treated at the institution so that they are respected, listened to, and have their needs met better. ideally i would’ve really liked if we saw them all end up with different solutions, like maybe some of them would want to leave the institution and make a life for themselves outside it but others would want to stay, but with more autonomy and respect within the institution.

[autumnalreaper]

ℍ𝕒𝕡𝕡𝕪 𝟝𝟡𝕥𝕙 𝔹𝕚𝕣𝕥𝕙𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕁𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤 ℍ𝕖𝕥𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕝𝕕!

[caffeinatedopossum]

I honestly don't think I was capable of fully understanding how dangerous restricting was until after I had been in recovery for like 8 months already. And I sadly really mean that. I worry about you guys :((

[atissi]

finally caught up on soil that binds us and couldnt get it out of my brain so here’s my favourite characters so far :)

[calamitycodified]

i have. many thoughts about that ending.

[lessthanimpressedlesbian]

What if Laudna goes into Imogen's next dream and they meet her mother there? What if Imogen subconsciously added a ring to her own finger in the dreamscape? What if Liliana sees them and starts crying because she's missed so much of Imogen's life?

"Oh Imogen, you're married?"

[sunnys-side-upside-down]

Ophidia Helix - Dark Magic

There are two finished renditions of this - The first image has photograph blurs to draw the piece together - The second doesn't have final blur renders to display the detail

[drpepper0703]

🍀🍒^_^