#not gonna tag with anything specific. too personal and messy bad writing. hard to explain

[autisticlee]

everyone wants me to be "more independent" (parents, therapist, case manager, friends, even strangers on the internet) but the thing is...I don't WANT to be. I force myself to do everything alone and hate asking for help because I was taught i'm a burden for doing so. I stay alone most of my time and do everything alone. no one offers help and if I need to ask, it's hard to get anyone to actually help. so I feel super independent already.

but not necessarily by choice. it was forced onto me. I was never ready. I was forced to act like am adult at a young age because...I don't know. I was "tall" for my age? i'm not sure. but I felt I was forced to grow up faster than other kids my age and before I was ready.

people in my life don't want to accept of believe it, but I struggle a lot. I have always. I never got the help or support I needed despite it being VERY obvious that I can't live a "normal" abled life they expect from me and tried to force me into. no one will accept that. being autistic and adhd and having a dissociative disorder and cptsd, and the list goes on, makes me get overwhelmed and confused super easily. I forget things, I lose track of time and myself, executive dysfunction is a permanent feature, I don't understand things very well most of the time, etc. but because I refuse to ask for help since i've always been expected not to, I either fail through everything or struggle to try doing it myself. leads to even more overwhelm than i have naturally, makes my physical ailments flare up all the time, and makes me burn out constantly to the point I can't do anything at all for months or even years and get even more behind, causing me to waste large chunks of my life away.

when it reaches that point, I can't do what's expected of me at all (which is most of the time to be honest. my "abled" days are extremely limited, like a few days out of the year if i'm lucky) I can't pretend i'm capable anymore. people feel the need to lecture me about not being "lazy" and "expecting everyone to do things for me" because I wont do the things they expect, even if I don't ask them for help. if I do ask for help, I get ignored or told to do it myself. some things need done for survival, so I just unwillingly put my already burnt out and exhausted self into a dissociative state in order to survive the constant pain and exhaustion.

lately i'm trying to ask for help more, but of course, everyone pushes back and tells me I "need to learn to do things myself/be more independent," as expected. my therapist and case manager say it's their jobs to help me "gain independence."

but, the thing is, I can't do that. I can't be constantly independent. not in the way i'm expected. i'm independent in that I spend 99% of my life alone in my room doing stuff on my own (sleeping, watching things, video games, drawing). i'm independent in that I struggle to ask for help from anyone and instead sit silently in confusion and pain and struggle until I fail or someone offers help on their own. the more I try to be the expected "independent," the more I burn out and struggle and waste my life away....but it's so hard to get people to understand that. I have to sacrifice SO MUCH of my wellbeing to even pretend to have their expected level of independence. it doesn't feel worth it. what I need is specific help and support that's not offered for adults who are expected to be independent. and it's so hard to explain that to anyone!

sometimes I need someone to do things with me by letting me follow them and copy what they do. I need someone to lead me and do things for me when i'm too overwhelmed and confused. sometimes I need someone to speak my words for me because I cant speak them. sometimes I need someone to be my human alarm clock and make sure I do things on time. sometimes I need someone to remind me of the same things over and over. sometimes I need someone to help me by making food or washing my hair.

I don't want to be babied and treated like a child. I want someone to do the things I tell them to do or help me figure out what i'm struggling with because I don't always even know i'm struggling or why. I don't need to "learn how to stop struggling and how to do it alone" because i've been trying that and it makes me struggle more because it's overwhelming and exhausting! I just need some help with things so don't keep reaching this constant 100% uptime of burnout! my brain and body cant take living in constant, unending burnout due to daily demands of living as a disabled person!

[aadmelioraa]

How are you feeling about this season overall? It seems like so many people are hating on it and giving up and it's just astounding me. I have my qualms about this season but it feels like people are going to extremes, and I think overall it's not nearly as terrible as so many people are thinking. I wonder if all the hype has gotten to people, and everyone was expecting this season to be amazing and wonderful when it's pretty par for the course for The 100 lol

Sorry I just got to this, Alicia! I’ve been out of town and on mobile intermittently. 

Yeah, I’ve had my share of problems with this season (like every season) but nothing that’s kept me from enjoying it on the whole. The fandom on the other hand (I’m putting the rest under the cut)…

My opinion on a few aspects of this season (and the way the general fandom is behaving) is not very popular. 

I’m still watching live every week, but I’ve taken a step back from the fandom because of all the bitching and fighting and negativity. Negative reactions are just as valid as positive ones, and I’m not going to try and tell people how to live their lives, but it’s been way too much for me personally to immerse myself in, and it doesn’t seem healthy on the whole for a lot of other fans as well. It’s one thing to express your disappointment and to give honest feedback, but another thing to performatively wallow in discussion of content you supposedly hate. There’s a balance to be found for all of us, but some blogs capitalize on repetitive “hot takes” that are really just mean spirited and shallow. That’s not new, there just seem to be more of them and shifting through all that mediocre salt makes me want to pull my hair out so I stay out of the tags, blacklist and block when I need to, and lately I’ve been pretty absent from the dash too. 

Things will settle down in a few weeks when we’re back on hiatus, and I’m honestly really looking forward to that. I haven’t been super motivated to write fic lately for some personal reasons but also…I just don’t feel like sharing with fandom right now. Everyone is so vitriolic and indignant and every little thing is your least fave’s fault while your fave would never and must be protected and I’m just so goddamn tired of it. I’ve unfollowed a lot of people, but the tags are a landmine and don’t even get me started on twitter. Yikes. 

From a shipper’s pov it’s been HARD to watch Bellamy and Clarke talking past each other, at odds, separated. I do appreciate how we’re really feeling the weight of the time jump and how much they’ve changed, but I agree that it’s heartbreaking to watch. I think it has to be, and I don’t think it’s bad writing, I actually think that conflict has been handled really well. But seeing the lack of understanding for either B or C in fandom lately is tough. I love them both, I think they both made the decisions they had to based on who they are now and the information they had at the time, and don’t think we’re meant to be pitting them against each other, but that’s not how the internet works. 

I also have been happy with Echo’s storyline and unhappy with Raven’s (in the latter half of the season specifically), so those are two very unpopular opinions that I’ve kinda kept to myself since I know the vast majority of the fandom has strongly opposing reactions. I like Echo, and I like how she’s been written both in relation to Bellamy and the rest of Spacekru. I LOVE Raven, and I’ve been honestly disappointed to see her sidelined particularly because the only real interactions she’s had have been with Shaw, who I like well enough, but…like…he’s a guy she just met…and she’s prioritizing him above her family she spent 6 years with in space? Nah, I don’t buy it. That’s not the Raven I know and love. I really enjoyed the Shaw/Raven dynamic when they were cyber flirting, I was ready to fall in love with them, but as soon as they met the lack of chemistry between the actors and the messy/occ (for Raven) writing just didn’t do anything for me (I know only like 2 people in the world agree with me here, that’s ok). I’m annoyed and I’m frustrated by that storyline tbh. And I don’t mind that other people love it, I’m glad it works for them! But for me it falls flat and honestly seems like a disservice to Raven’s character. It’s nice to see her smile OF COURSE but I wanted more for her this season. *shrugs*

I have plenty more unpopular opinions but I’m gonna stop for now. But while I’m complaining, I’m pretty bummed the bindi is back. I feel like the writers could have easily explained that away somehow, but…they didn’t. It’s incredibly offensive to many fans, and they’ve been vocal for multiple seasons now about why. To be clear, I don’t think fans are owed anything by content creators and the way this fandom treats the writers is insane most of the time, but this is an example where it’s clearly cultural appropriation and the right thing would have been to acknowledge that (in literally any fashion) and do away with the bindi within the world of the show. I do think we’ll be saying goodbye forever in one way or another to the chip/commander mythos by the end of the season, and I’m very ready for that. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m withholding judgement on this season until the finale airs and things have a chance to settle. I’ve really enjoyed it on the whole, I think much of the cast is doing their best work, and so much emphasis has been placed on the final episode(s) that I hope it can live up to the hype and give us a satisfying conclusion to this (dark, difficult, tumultuous, absurd, beautiful) season. 

[isnappedmypencil]

Reading Tag

I was tagged to do this by @neoncathedrals and I’m so happy about it! Thank you!

1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?

Hmm. Well, that would be the first book I got after I lost a bunch of my books got lost, so that would have to be Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next?

Current: “Stiger: Tales of the Seventh, Part One” by Marc Alan Edelheit. The interesting thing about this is that I got this book for free by the author himself at SuperCon in Raleigh this month. He was handing them out. He signed it and even wrote my name in it. Isn’t that awesome? Last: “Boy Robot” by Simon Curtis. Before coming across this gem at my library, I was unaware that Simon Curtis had written a book. I’ve always been a big fan of his music and I checked this out from my library with no hesitation. Next: The next book I want to read is “Six of Crows” because so many people have been talking about how good it was and how interesting the characters are. I need to get my hands on it.

3. Which book does everyone like and you hated?

Sorry to be cliché here, but Twilight. I just couldn’t stand it. I read up until the end of Eclipse and couldn’t read the next book. The writing bothered me, the characters were boring and stupid, and side characters had way more interesting back stories than the one I was reading. I mean Jasper was turned into a vampire to lead an army of the undead in a series of territory wars in Mexico. I would have read the shit out of that! But, noo! I had to read about Bella who doesn’t know how to identity an abusive relationship and Edward, the textbook example of a stalker, who decided that going to high school was a smart way to spend eternity. Ugh.

4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t?

The Mortal Instruments series. I keep looking at it on the shelves and almost getting it, but I just keep finding a way to convince myself that I’ll do it later.

5. Which book are you saving for “retirement?”

I’m not really saving any book for retirement.

6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?

Wait until the end. I like to earn my endings. I learned my lesson in my early days.

7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?

They are definitely interesting and very important. I like reading about the people who helped make the books I like possible. They are all wonderful for it.

8. Which book character would you switch places with?

After a long time, I decided to pick Kody from “Infinity” of the Chronicles of Nick by Sherilyn Kenyon. I do like Kody and she was important to the series, but if i could switch with her just for a bit so I could hang around Nick and Caleb (Sarcastic Sass and Sassy Sarcasm respectively), I would.

9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?

Yes! The Junie B. Jones books! Not only are they a staple of my earliest elementary school years, they are the first books that made me want to read the whole series. It was the first full series I ever read.

10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.

At first I thought that my answer to Question 2 was the only fit for this, but then I remembered one other way. I don’t know if this counts as interesting, but it definitely caught me off guard and I thought it was strange. So, in eleventh grade I had this English teacher who knew I was gonna be a bit of trouble from day one. I had tuned out her “First Day Speech” by accident and was staring off into space. When I came back, everyone was starting at me and the teacher said that she had never seen anyone make a face like that in her class ever. To this day, I still have no clue what face I was making. Anyway, I was averaging a C in her class and she wasn’t too happy about it. I love English classes. I love reading and writing and doing essays. But I am bad at paying attention and I forget things easily. And I procrastinate. Like Hell. So, I wasn’t her favorite student and she was often very short with me. At the end of the year I had run to her classroom to see what my finals grade had been. When I got there she was packing up. She saw me in the doorway, looked me over (the panting, messy, wide-eyed, twitching spectacle that I was), raised an eyebrow, pulled something out of her bag, and held it toward me. It was a book. “Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori, Book One” by Lian Hearn. Apparently, she saw this book somewhere, thought that I would like it, and BOUGHT it for me. Pristine condition and all. Then she turned, called my finals score over her shoulder flippantly, and dismissed me. I really love this book. (TL;DR: I got an awesome book about a young Japanese assassin from a teacher that didn’t really like me, but apparently watched me enough to know my tastes.)

11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?

Well, I did once lend my friend my copy of “Magic Street” by Orson Scott Card because she is an overachieving, overworked AP student and the only child of a single mother who pushed her too hard and I thought she would like it and be able to sit and read it and maybe chill for a bit. I never got it back, though.

12. Which book has been with you to the most places?

I carried my copy of the biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow everywhere I went for a long time, especially when I went to UNCG, because I was rancid piece of Hamiltrash and wanted to take any chance I got to bring up Hamilton to strangers and talk about interesting things that I found in the biography.

13. Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?

Not really. Actually, it was middle school where I started reading Shakespeare and didn’t like it and then in high school I had an English teacher (not the one from Question 10) who actually went in and explained things and made me realise how funny and interesting Shakespeare actually was. Now I love reading his plays.

14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?

Aside from bookmarks or unexpected porn, I’ve never found anything strange in a book.

15. Used or brand new?

I don’t mind used books. They’re cheaper, sometimes free. I also love new books. I don’t really have a preference.

16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?

Confession time: I have never actually read a Stephen King book. So, yeah, I don’t have an opinion.

17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?

I honestly can’t say I have. See, I don’t trust movie adaptations anymore, so I tend to stay away from them. Sometimes I’ll see a movie that I didn’t know was based off of a book, read the book, and still like the book better. So, no.

18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?

The Percy Jackson books! Jack-in-the-Box Jesus Christ! Okay, I love the Percy Jackson series. Love it with all my heart. And the Heroes of Olympus books, too. So, those movies make me so angry. If that was how they were going to treat the story, they should have never made those movies in the fucking first place.

19. Have you ever read a book that’s made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?

Damn. I was totally going to say “Fifty Shades of Chicken”. Unless you count some manga, I can’t think of any books that made me hungry.

20. Who is the person whose book advice you’ll always take?

Gotta say my friends. They know what I like or what I might like and I’ve found many great books through them. Also, some of my old teachers that I still talk to.

Okay, time to tag this thing. @alextriestowritestuff @byjillianmaria @quilowrites @acfawkes @december-soulstice @christinawritesfiction @boothewriter @malloryblaise

And anyone else who wants to do this, I’d love to see them!

(Since I don’t have a laptop, things aren’t bold and I can’t seem to find out how to make them bold. So, sorry about that.)