Being the only disabled person in a friend group is like. Argues against mental age for 30 minutes without achieving anything because they will die if they cant call developmentally disabled adults 6 year olds. Feel guilty for cancelling plans for disability reasons and making up a lie so you dont have to tell the truth. Get called a cripple after explaining your symptoms. Get told nothing is ever the doctors fault because they work soooo hard and you're just not persistent enough. Realize the only way theyd ever do even minor caregiving tasks for you is if they were paid. Spend an hour arguing against eugenics. Listen to someone talk about a group of disabled people and with every sentence it gets more obvious they never interacted with anyone from this group personally. Get compared to peoples elderly relatives. Get -
ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.
when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!
that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.
but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!
joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.
and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.
tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.
So I was musing to Mags about how somehow in the last few years, after being weirdly unapproachable (and really awkward with children) all my life, I am now often the person that single mothers will approach to take a family photo for them, or small children will abruptly hand their toys off to with no warning.
And then I realized (after a moment, because I rarely get to go out around people anymore except when my dad abducts me for a tiny vacation, so I don't have a lot of normal life to compare that to) that all those experiences actually happened in museums and aquariums and zoos, where I am not more outgoing but I am much brighter and smiling more than usual and almost always sharing random facts with my dad because infodumping is my love language...
And then I realized these people are approaching me because when I am in that specific environment, I am giving off very chill Ms. Frizzle vibes.
Ok I know I'm heavily biased here but like I kinda love that Astarion's romance is one of the few in this type of video game where you basically end up canonically unmarried and childfree in his "good" ending? Just travelling the world??
Like it's honestly the millennial dream lmfaoo cannot believe i chose what would undoubtedly be my favorite option, first try
i think jason's probable death in gotham wars is going to either be a non-continuity death (like dick's deaths) or a "death" (like tim's deaths) in which he is not really dead, just like, in stasis or smh
(or they said we'll dig deeper this time so you can't dig out and offed him again)
I think one of the reasons why the theory that Arya will go away at the end of the story because she’s too far gone to assimilate back into society is so unconvincing is because she literally spends the latest two books (AFFC and ADWD) doing that very thing! Like her training hasn’t been about her being a reclusive murderous hermit. She literally spends the two books talking to people, making friends, integrating into new cultures. She’s around people all the damn time! And even if we bring up her ACOK and ASOS arcs which were rather dark in nature, she’s still around people interacting with them, still being a part of society (even if she’s quite low on the totem pole in those books).
Arya is a character who feels so strongly and whose arc is often dictated by how she interacts with the people around her. So to take that away from her is not only a bad understanding of her character arc (not to be condescending or anything), but it’s also not very satisfying as far as character/narrative progression goes. Because if the narrative has proven so far that even in her darkest moments, Arya can laugh and love and be such a passionate member of society, how then does it make sense for her to go away and be on her own?? How does that make sense when AFFC and ADWD prove that she still loves being around people?
In your serial killer fan fic Pretty Little Thing, we know for sure kids have already died, right? What if while out investigating fawcett city the Justice League stumble upon the body of a missing kid....maybe Scott, maybe that one girl or other kid, who knows 🤔 👀 where are the bodies going?? The anticipation is amazing
Hi anon!
You are correct, kids have definitely died before Billy was taken. But as for the bodies...besides the "trophies" that are being kept the disposal method makes it unlikely the JL will stumble upon a body (partially because they aren't looking for a body so even if they did find one they might not see the connection) but maybe that would be even more tragic, them finding a body and having no idea they're connected to Captain Marvel’s disappearance...
It's definitely worth thinking about!
(Also I'm glad you're enjoying the suspense! I promise it won't be forever!)
idk if ive ever posted abt it but i reeeeally really dont like how much studio orange made sure we remember vash is nai's little brother and nai is the older one (even if thats not even the case, because theyre twins.) its so overplayed and feels incestuous, considering the common theme in anime with the sexualised 'onii-chan' bullshit. idk. as far as i remember in trimax vash is referred to as the little brother ONCE by knives and a few times by elendira who obviously makes fun of it, and it's like orange took advantage of the fact that it's canon and fed into it a little too much. it also adds to the power imbalance narrative that fandoms love so much and gives people a chance to make vash helpless in a sexual context. uhhh end rant before i forget my point which is that it feels weird
Rafayel is not queer coded because he has (supposedly) feminine aspects to his demeanor and personality and face, he's queer coded (to my burdeningly biggest bulging noggin) (and/or at least a good allegory for queer people or ig certain other minorities i don't know enough about to go on as much about) for having always been about breaking free (or trying) of rigid boundaries and passionately exploring the new even if it's forbidden (the sea's surface, land, the red of the blood of his beloved people mixed in the sea, MC)
one of few who's faced identity-centric pressures even higher than most already do (as a born god whose red strings of fate and love were meant to become puppet strings for a "follower" he once thought would simply be a bride)
and he's disliked the shallowness of humanity even when he's been forced to assimilate and after he's gone through such lengths to understand it in theory
and, you know, sea creatures have a higher tendency to be fluid (badumtss) about "gender", or even when some have binary-centric roles it can be in a way dissimilar to most humans', and queer people of all sorts have always been mistaken as inhuman and monstrous
and Lemuria is literally described as a place more centric on love and freedom
and he accepts change, but would never truly change only for others, as even with a few facades he is overall all about authenticity even with the sometimes smallest things (paint, loving MC not just because of the lost history but the present he does acknowledge as more important) even whenever it's more inconvenient or downright dangerous or makes others have trouble liking him.
31 today! 🫶🏼 grateful for many things: for my friends and my followers, for still finding joy in creating, and—at this age—for not turning into a soulless, corporate blob like I thought I would 😅
thanks to everyone who's stuck around this long! dw, I'm not leaving any time soon 🫡🩷