mightymelancholy

[mightymelancholy]

Do you love trans women?

Do you wish things were easier for trans women?

What about trans women of color?

What about navajo trans women of color?

Do you support trans women in the material and tangible ways you're capable of?

In that case I submit for your for consideration:

My gf

Politics and the news are giving her some extremely justified anxiety and as a trans woman of color she feels the need to stop being patient and rush through the last part of her transition before she loses all access to it being possible.

Right now we're trying to raise money for her to get:

ffs

breast augmentation

These are pretty costly and will require her to miss a lot of work for healing so any reblogs, boosts, tags, or other help sent her way is very much appreciated!

[mightymelancholy]

That's such a good thing to keep in mind thanks for posting this. I should make a list for great quotes like these ♥️🌱🪡👖❤️

Let go of the idea that diy will inherently look shit. All your clothes are handmade you just don't see the people doing it.

[mightymelancholy]

I'm a few hours in and just got done with completing paying my money for the Clawsworth, but I can say that I've been enjoying my time playing Amber Isle. I really enjoy the art style and the shop keeping mechanics.

Though I do wish the timer for people at the counter was lower because my time cleaning isn't much due to rushing over to the counter to beat the timer or just staying put and mashing 'A' so I don't run out of time. Also when a customer asks for something because they're often too vague so I mess up. Hopefully those aspects and other critiques I've seen get improved upon, but other than that I've bought really into this charming game.

Meig's Official Paleontologist Review of Amber Isle

This game is so accessible. I tend to use cheaters/trainers a lot in most video games because I'm a Busy Adult Without Countless Hours To Spend Grinding In Video Games - but I don't need them in Amber Isle. They also don't exist for Amber Isle, but still - I'm not wishing I had them the whole time. It's especially "ADHD time blindness" friendly

THE CHARACTERS ARE SO CUTE HOLY FUCK they all have such interesting and unique personalities and they are just so precious. I must protect Kipper at all costs.

Yes, you're a shopkeeper, but you don't have to be a raging capitalist. In fact, in many ways, it's better for the game to undercharge people / pay more for things they sell you / give lots of gifts in order to bump up your friendship with the community; it's very easy to get money in the game and you really don't need to be stingy or go for huge profits in order to win

I LOVE THAT THEY ARE CALLED "PALEOFOLK". Not a single character is called a dinosaur that isn't a dinosaur, unlike other paleo games *cough paleo pines cough*. And because they aren't limiting themselves to the Mesozoic, there's a nice interesting variety of prehistoric critters for the characters.

It's so much fun that your character is also a Paleofolk and that there's so many options. I wish we could wear pants, but other than that...

The taxon balancing needs a *wee* bit of work. Since they can do the Paleozoic and Cenozoic, it's ironically too dinosaur-heavy; and those dinosaurs are a little biased and don't include anything more derived than Archaeopteryx, which is... a mistake. I recognize the devs had a challenge in picking the right charismatic fauna, but still. Honestly, this problem is easily solved: just add more paleofolk!

That said it is so nice to have a game with Maiasaura :3

The world is beautiful and so much fun to explore

The calendar is way too long. WAY too long. Has anyone actually gotten to year 2? Because I haven't. Also it's windy too much. The weather should be more varied.

I would love for info about different objects to come up when you're going through them so it's easier to make sure the items you're displaying are balanced and so you know what to recommend for different customer requests

The main quest is a little short, so it would be nice for more content to be added to it in the future. I'd also love to be able to have more adventures and activities when hanging out with paleofolk

Once again, a game without romance. Hooray! No pansexual crises!

PEPPER x CLOVER FOR LIFE. L. I. F. E.

Definitely worth playing. It is super fun and super cute. Check it out at @ambertailgames!

My Paleo Pines Review

My Roots of Pacha Review

[mightymelancholy]

I'm making this post on the behalf of Sami and his family, who are now less than 5k away from their goal. Please support their fundraiser here, or help repost and share it, any interaction helps thank you!!

Sami's written this:

"It's a simple image, and yet it carries a powerful message. What do you understand? And what will you do?

My family is forced to flee every day from one area to another. We leave behind our tent and belongings under heavy shelling aimed at pushing us out. Some collapse face-first from exhaustion or lose consciousness—hunger weakens their immunity and blurs their vision. Those who go searching for flour often return carried on shoulders—either injured or dead. Think carefully. Imagine how I must carry my injured daughter Lynn, while my sick mother and father crawl in fear.

Without income and with prices rising, you and your donations are my only hope in the face of this brutal war where my children have been injured and go hungry. "

[mightymelancholy]

Solarpunk, realism, dystopia: a rant

Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there 🌸

You can find the Prompts podcast here, I drew some of the covers :D Also check out this digital library full of Creative Commons Solarpunk art (neither of these are sponsored).

🦗Somewhat shameful plug🦗

I would highly appreciate if you threw me a couple bucks on Buy Me a Coffee or bought a commission, my money number is only getting smaller these days 😔🤙

[mightymelancholy]

I hate having to post political posts like this nut he we are again. Anybody from the UK wanna sign this. Folks from outside the UK maybe share it?

[mightymelancholy]

*Either Psychic/Bug or Fairy/Bug

Drew a new evolution line for the slay, goth girlies

I don’t like this Pokémon that much but I was thinking of a type being focused on protecting the environment and new line game being about aiding in agriculture, the weather, general animal life, and the social aspect of environmental protection. So, this line would represent both the social & insect element of environmental safety. I chose bug because the goth scene has people making their own clothes for different aesthetic, financial, social, & self-sufficient reasons. And bug can work well because just like insects certain aspects of trauma or our health can seem pointless to think about in the moment but actually have a lot weight. Levanny would be making the clothes though or taught Gothit & Gothorita how. Gothorita is also called the “Manipulate Pokemon” so I imagine they use their cosmic like webs to mind control people. And Gothitelle is probably sad from seeing the “end of all existence” lol

This is a simple sketch for the idea and I hope you like it :D

[mightymelancholy]

A little phone doodle of Petra Padparadscha. I came up with the last name a while ago. But I was thinking what if Petra turned evil from being manipulated and possessed by an ice themed mob. (I also her growing longer and glowing with magic). Some songs that came up when thinking of this specific scenario were "Cold, Cold, Cold" by the Family Crest and "Queen of Mean" from the third Descendants movie.

I'd imagine Petra is going through an arc of struggling to let people go and maybe is convinced by *insert antagonist* to have her body taken over so she can have the power to freeze time to keep her friends around. It's been a long while since I've played and seen the full gameplay of MCSM season 2 but I believe Petra teamed up with the Admin or one of his imprisoned lackeys at some point right. I just think it'd be cool if Petra and the rest of the main group had alternative powered-up, villain designs. So, her having ice powers makes sense to me.

Anyway my idea for a new potential villain arc would be an entity who was hurt in the past (maybe an old builder or whatever the first builders were called) and Petra takes comfort in knowing she's not the only one who feels left out. And even though Petra doesn't seem like the building enthusiast and is more of the modern day compared to this old builder, the two could find commonality on how life and people change so quickly.

Hopefully I explained that correctly and you guys see the vision 😅

[mightymelancholy]

Saw the thumbnail (very rude and in bad faith) and dumb replies she made in the video's comment section and I'm really disappointed in her. I've known about her since she made Spinel and Pearl reverse AU comic and watched a good amount of her videos. I'm sad that she's dumb enough to actually sugar coat the toxic relationship of Stolas and Blitzø and act like queer characters should be getting special treatment. I don't care if the imp and owl are gay their relationship is uncomfortable, nasty, and toxic and those aspects shouldn't be ignored up until people want to brag about their complexity. And unlike Sai, ArteiceTB honestly criticized the poor framing of a clearly abusive relationship with power imbalances, and sexual coercion in exchange for a disadvantaged group in society to be able to provide for his daughter and employees/friends.

I can't really be surprised by crap like this anymore, I've seen fairly decent people become willingly stupid and disingenuous for a while now that it's expected at this point. I hope Sai gets called out for downplaying the toxicity and clear disgusting and sexually coercive behavior of the relationship. ArteiceTB did nothing wrong by treating a queer relationship like a cishet one and criticizing it fairly. More people need to call out how dangerous a message Stolas and Blitzø's relationship can send to people.

Edit: With the slander and racism (I didn't want to watch the whole thing but did skim)

The Gremlin arises from her dank cave again to whine about how hating abuse is bad because the abuse is gay or whatever...

Also the Stolas on that thumbnail is RANCID-

[mightymelancholy]

Fourth in a series I of comics about protesting safety tips I made with @this.is.ysabel . This one is about the dangers of police surveillance and how to avoid it if possible. Keep being safe when you go out. Don’t get snatched!

[mightymelancholy]

Thanks for replying and giving your thoughts as an Indian and Hindu person. Also I consider myself an anti theist (specifically against organized religion and the concept itself but fine with individuals practicing it by themselves and with their families) but definitely don't appreciate how Afro and Brown deities get Whitewashed and people excuse it. I like the concept of gods but don't like the erasure that these companies do.

Also I personally don't mind non-Afro people using AAVE if that's a nurture and nature thing, but people who randomly adopt it like as a virtual minstrel (people like Shane Dawson's old videos) thing to mock and laugh at Black American culture is pretty icky. But if a non-Afro person grew up speaking like that or it's just important to a narrative then I'm pretty indifferent. And I'll probably just live in Europe (The U.S. is in shambles) because a more diverse place could at least prevent me worrying about people groping or strangers asking to touch my hair. Also no staring because of my skin color. Also the benefit of 'Blackwashing' especially characters who are meant to be darker skinned is showing people in more homengeos regions that were not weird, or really worth staring at or touching but we are worth basic respect, boundaries, and opportunities to be great and beautiful.

But if companies and producers can't help subtract melanin from anything & everything then I'll do the representation myself. And I know as a Queer Black American if I were to advertise a potential show or game to fellow my American or just Western audience I'd get people complaining about little cishet and pale & White people there are. I'm not a racist against lighter skinned & White people ofc and I will add them, but more more marginalized groups (including disabled people) will just be apart of main cast and will probably be the majority. 1) It's fun to write these characters and take some their identity in account for character design. And 2) I want more representation that I especially haven't seen before. Because if it's not by a small creator usually in the mainstream the representation is just a single Black person or a single gay person. Sometimes the character is Black and gay but then they're often exaggerated and or not the main character and treated as the writer's burden or they don't know what to do with the character.

I think I got a little off topic but what I'm trying to say is that people who don't understand racism & colorism deeply and or are just trying to be a centrist (humans literally can't be these balanced, 'both right wingers and the left are equal wrong', always in the middle people because bias and disgusting policies and bigoted beliefs mainly on the right and from republicans do in fact exist). People will complain over little things and will try to find a reason to get mad at darker skinned people and try to 'put them in their place' and act like a higher authority. Also annoying when non-White who should know better do this and try to act like the good and reasonable ones on the subject of 'Blackwashing'.

And a bunch of Black & Brown people during the Sumeru and Natlan colorism stuff said things along the lines of 'Well I'm part of insert non-white group and I don't mind/care'. Like good for you but understand how a game known and well liked by I believe currently 4.7 million as of 2025 would cause harm when the company engages in subtle and blatant racism & colorism. They incentivize players to spend money on pale characters to preferably not upset Chinese players specificslly given how some acted out at the Natlan boycott and edits of said characters. Also some of those players did other stupid like hurt a cat because of Scaramouche/The Wanderer and get mad that Lyney wasn't a women and looked feminine.

People will get mad Black & Brown people when we want to intercept a character who doesn't even utilize their original identity interestingly because cishet and pale are treated as the default so writers don't really use that aspect to tell stories. And people will be upset when we make our own stories. I don't Viziepop, her shows, and think her representation is troubling but it was and still is unreasonable to get up in arms when the majority of characters are queer. Sometimes underrepresented people want to see more of themselves and others and I don't feel bad that my story will have mostly darker skinned and some light skinned racialized characters, disabled, conditions such as hirsutism, and intersex, gay, and trans umbrella characters.

Again if it isn't malicious, the identity isn't very important to the character, and or it isn't swapping an underrepresented group for another for no reason and evidence then it's fine. And when it comes to anime that also applies since it's typically Japanese (not someone like Ainu, Ryukyuans, and Burakumin people) being represented. Let's be so, Japan has a monopoly on popular animation and even people who don't like anime can often still appreciate the artistry. I don't love anime as much as I'd like to because it's often creepy towards women and children. Also biracial Black & Asian people exist or just show a tanner Asian in an ideal world without the colorism culture and ideology is nice to see. Because places like Japan, China, and North & South Korea would probably have more varied skin tones if it wasn't for their pretty toxic beauty standards.

“black washing is just as bad as white washing!”

“recoloring pale characters is racist!!”

you people love screeching and whining about black and brown people simply wanting to represent themselves, but then suddenly quiet down about actual racism. I’m NOT sorry, I will NOT give a fuck if a random black person on the internet gives a genshin impact character dark brown skin and dreadlocks, but I will give a fuck if the bloody company (hoyoverse) is racist and does not portray cultures properly despite using and profiting off of south asian, middle eastern, African, and South American cultures and traditions in their stupid fucking gacha games. this is not simply about Hoyoverse and their shit games though, it can be about any company/game/media in general that is racist as hell.

[mightymelancholy]

Yeah at first I was against blackwashing a few years ago and didn't think about it much afterwards. The YouTubers making videos hating on it and or trying to be 'nuanced' and centrists definitely didn't help put these artists in a good light. I didn't hate on them but I was in the middle of it, but after seeing so much racism & colorism online and in real political spaces, and just listening to well researched video essays I adopted a better opinion on this. I never despised blackwashing but now I definitely support it.

Of course I don't think people should draw characters black if the said character's culture and identity is integral to their story. As well as changing the ethnicity of other minorities such as Tibetan and Ainu people. Though Japanese and Han Chinese people can be fine since they tend to be overrepresented in media as apparently the only Asian people to ever exist. And I guess whenever an Asian person is represented especially in popular gacha games like Hoyoverse & Kuro games, as well as most Western media the only skin tone available is ghostly pale. I understand it's the beauty standard but that's not an excuse to stay stagnant.

Asian people just like any group shouldn't feel I can only assume there is at least some peer pressure to lighten their skin when seeing ads, games, shows, and maybe some books where pale is the gold standard. And Genshin Impact has no excuse to exclude a variety of skin tones in Natlan and Sumeru or really any region, but especially the first two just because 'it 's just their culture'. People need to understand that Asian people know Afro people and Latin people exist, they don't live on a magical far away land (I literally live in Japan). Well some did touch my hair without my permission (glad I'm seen as a zoo animal 😀) so maybe better global education on different people is needed, same goes for the American education. I sometimes see Black people and some Asian people of differing skin tones, most definitely in Southeast Asia countries and Taiwan.

Blackwashing characters is fine and can showcase that Afro people or just anyone with Brown or Darker skin tones can be just beautiful and badass as the characters are portrayed. People not to stop acting like their being oppressed or that a character they like is being 'uglified' or 'ruined' just because a Black Artist wanted to see themselves represented when we're often not and actively excluded from media, and or have our stories and identity watered down to be more palatable. People really like to take edge cases/extreme scenarios just to 'prove' a dumbass point about how 'whitewashing and blackwashing are the same and darkening a characters skin hurts White peo- I mean everyone equally'. Racebending an overrepresented group is usually neutral or just adds to their character. The Natlan edits for example just looking objectively better in color theory also, and honestly more accurate (light skin Latin and Afro people ofc exist but let's be fr they definitely face hardships but they're still more represented as what 'this minority should look like').

What I and you said about racebending pale characters can be applied to other marginalized groups like trans, non-binary, gay, aspec, poly, and intersex people. If people want to project their identity onto a character that isn't doing much with theirs then I think it's fine and often adds to that character and story. In the Genshin Impact community I've never seen many transphobes and homophobes but instead a bunch of Hoyo apologists and covert racists & colorists trying to defend or gaslight normal people when in came to the exploitation of Indigenous cultures from Pre-Columbian Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Oceania. If these companies and consumers don't want to see our skin then I'd rather they don't include if we can't even be drawn and depicted accurately.

Other Chinese don't have this issue or at least not to such a severe extent. The first decent game that comes to mind is Dislyte and Reverse 1999. Reverse is lacking a bit but at least on of their Black character is darker skinned, lot more than Hoyo character I can remember (the dark skinned characters are pretty ashy, and them and pretty much any Brown character in Hoyo games are bad or nearly scraping past average in regards to gameplay).

'Blackwashing' seems pretty fun. The only character I did it with is Mualani from Natlan but I see darkening the skin of a Hawaiian person out in the heat surfing as more a correction than anything, especially when pale characters dominate the game's total playable characters. The many times I've seen controversy over racebending pale and White American characters is when an artist is minding their business, makes a post, and a mob of people go nuts over 'erasure'. Because again Brown and darker skinned is only reserved for Indian and African & Black Americans people. Since as we all know, no person of European origin, Jewish, Latin, or Asian person alive from any region in the past or modern day could ever have a shade darker than Louis from Family Guy or that of the literal clouds. Unless they weren't a playable character, apart from the main cast, or Satan forbid someone a love interest who isn't disposable. As long as the identity being changed isn't integral to a character's journey and motives and or anything like changing a bisexual person to a lesbian or gay person with literally no reason then I don't care if you make changes to pale, cis, and hetero characters just for fun and or to make respresentation in a character you see yourself in. Creating your own ocs is good too but 'blackwashing' is as dumb as a term like the people who made it.

If a company exploits your culture and identity but chooses not to represent you or if they do, they create more harm and stereotypes (Mualani being the overly friendly, and moe-esque Hawaiian girl) then don't support them. I quit their game and made a video after their blatant colorism and knew they weren't going to change since they cater to Chinese and sometimes Japanese players more globally. After the Natlan stuff they even caved to Chinese players and reworked Neuvillette because he was too 'weak' I guess. And I knew they'd stay the same because the exact same thing happened in Sumeru.

“black washing is just as bad as white washing!”

“recoloring pale characters is racist!!”

you people love screeching and whining about black and brown people simply wanting to represent themselves, but then suddenly quiet down about actual racism. I’m NOT sorry, I will NOT give a fuck if a random black person on the internet gives a genshin impact character dark brown skin and dreadlocks, but I will give a fuck if the bloody company (hoyoverse) is racist and does not portray cultures properly despite using and profiting off of south asian, middle eastern, African, and South American cultures and traditions in their stupid fucking gacha games. this is not simply about Hoyoverse and their shit games though, it can be about any company/game/media in general that is racist as hell.

[mightymelancholy]

The Pig is Here

Finished Reuben today, hope you guys like this redesign for him :)

[mightymelancholy]

This is so cool!!!

Keep up the amazing work 👍

It's been tiring but we're still here, happy pride yall

[mightymelancholy]

[mightymelancholy]

Got inspired to redesign these guys after binge watching YouTubers Spilling the Milk. I’ve been thinking of potential plot lines for a hypothetical tv show, because I like these characters and the narrative and think they could be better with more depth. (I may fix up Jesse a bit more because their design is a little off to me.) DanTDM got me to play Minecraft Story Mode and I think this goofy game should be preserved.

This game shouldn’t be locked behind a Netflix subscription and though I haven’t seen the Minecraft movie yet, I just know it’s gonna be mediocre with some few highlights and dumb fun. I really like that TellTale Games took the premise of the game seriously and was really sincere with its story telling. I don’t mind comedic moments in Minecraft of course (a block game is just gonna have some inherent silliness) but the Minecraft movie gives off Mario movie vibes. I’d like to see Minecraft Story Mode be revived and keep its pretty serious tone. So, I thought drawing the gang would be fun even though I honestly don’t play Minecraft and only did a few times before becoming actually ill (maybe it was saturation or camera movements idk), and this first time drawing in the Minecraft style.

I forgot to draw Reuben, whoops. I’ll do that later lol

I may go more in detail about the show idea I have. I wanna keep the fantasy but include educational stuff since it seems the official Minecraft team likes to focus on that.

[mightymelancholy]

Yeah my ELA class and I are reading and doing quick writes for it. And today our question was; "Characterization of George & Lennie's relationship?"

I wrote a full page describing both their personalities, like Lennie is forgetful, at times naive, sensitive to others criticisms, and if feels he is doing enough to better himself. While George is poor at understanding people (such as Lennie), irritable, practical. Everyone was called on to answer and for once I was pretty eager to (mostly because I felt like some kid was gonna say some ignorant stuff). And someone did. A boy was called on and thought a good description for the very obvious disabled/neurodivergent character was the "dumb" one.

............

Seriously?

No, seriously, like me and some others groaned, and we're taken aback. The teacher sitting behind me who helps guide kids with accommodations (there were two including her and I do use accommodations) just laughed it off in a 'wow he just said that' way. My ELA teacher just said "maybe that isn't the best word to use, maybe 'mentally challenged or special'". I raised my hand soon after and asked my ELA teacher if he could change "special" to disabled or neurodivergent? And he did cross out "special" for disabled instead. And when we did our notebook swap to grade and comment on our classmate's quick write for today I saw the terms "stupid", "stupidness", "not smart", used to describe Lennie but George as "smart".

But I graded her writing and grammar in total a 15/15 and made a little note to not default to comparing intelligent with characters, especially for disabled people. Our teacher also looks out and grades quick writes, which is good because it truly seems like he doesn't believe this book to be ableist or problematic. He did the typical "now you may see some outdated elements in this book given the time period" short note. But it's sad that this discussion of disability, racism, and misogyny ends there (and none of the problematic stuff were specified it was left vague).

And I knew the N-word would appear in this book and I was nervous that our teacher would say it aloud and thought I would say something if he did. For context I'm African-American and our teacher is White. We got to the part and without hesitation he said the N-word. I unfortunately didn't say anything (because I'm a pussy) but I quietly groaned and some people seemed to shift a bit, which he probably heard because I skipped the word entirely the next few lines. It's like I'm not that offended and I know he's just reading the text as written, and I've never been called a racial slur directly, but I still feel a little uncomfortable when a non Afro-descent person says it. And I don't know if this contributes to my discomfort but a kid in Sophomore year in my Japanese class sitting behind me (who wasn't African) did randomly say the N-word and I sadly didn't speak up but just looked at him. And I have had my hair touched and fondled by random older women in East Asian countries, which definitely grossed me out and never wanting to live in a homogeneous place ever.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make is we should have had a discussion about the stereotypes and problematic elements and characterization in this book and after before reading it. It's so disappointing that schools even mine that appear to have a pretty progressive environment and study body still fall back on using pretty iffy language and ways to describe people. We really only focus on racism in the past instead of also talking about it in the present. The same goes for refusing to talk about modern day misogyny and women's rights and only laser focusing on the past. It's probably why some people (like my father unfortunately) have said "women have all the rights" or "that bigotry is all in the past". But at least women and ethnic minorities get taught in history class, because I've never in life got taught about disabled in a genuine way in a classroom. Their history isn't talked about and so they are relegated to pretty ableist books from the past written by I believe a neurotypical person or at least someone with a different way of thinking to Lennie, (and doesn't have "special" super strength told to kill animals because he's super dangerous).

I haven't finished the book but I think it would've been better to have at least two disabled characters and to be down Lennie's exaggerated behaviors. That's what I did for most of my characters is make more than one character for ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence. I may go to teacher to recommend he start with a discussion before reading the book, use more updated language, refrain from using the N-word even if 'it's just a book', and actively shut down and explain why referring to a disabled character as "dumb" for example is ignorant, reductive, and a shallow way to look out character analysis. We really should de-normalize looking at a neurotypical and neurodivergent character and instantly comparing the perceived intelligence between the two.

This is the year 2025 and highschoolers who are privileged enough to have so many different devices don't use it to ask questions and seemingly not find varying creators of different topics and backgrounds to be more educated about the world and the people inhabiting it.

It's disappointing how my generation (Gen Z) would rather dumbify themselves, than learn about people when it's so simple to type something into Google do some reading. Or if your visual learner and like personalities explain things (like me) then find creators (usually the small ones are the best) who spend the time editing, and scripting such interesting stuff. It's clear there's a refusal to learn and discuss things that need acknowledging.

I am disappointed in myself for not getting on these people and properly explaining what they said is wrong. Because even if I'm not great at explaining things and being put on the spot makes me nervous, that side of themselves shouldn't be an excuse to be like everyone else and give disapproving noises. A short "maybe we shouldn't say that" is to curt and tame as a response for what these kids say, write, think about, and project like it's normal. Because when things aren't explained and we just move on like it never happened then is anyone really learning right from wrong, bigotry from acceptance. Now that and some others will probably only recognize what they did as wrong because they got a negative reaction not because reducing character traits down to "smart" or not is a shallow read of someone. I can understand if he was describing a specific event Lennie, George, or whatever character did as "dumb" but he specifically called a disabled character "dumb" and most likely believed his speech patterns and stimming behaviors as factors in his perceived 'low intelligence'. And if everyone was going to try to move past it then I should've said something instead of being a sheep, I know better so I should've done something where that behavior could have been criticized and discontinued.

Hopefully next time I'll be better and say something. The book is alright so far it's just the lack of acknowledging Lennie's disability and how his traits are framed as negatives and my class's ableist behavior just makes me wanna get this book over with.

people on here often seem to respond to critiques of canonical classics, or "higher" art by dismissing it out of hand. maybe in more elevated language, but essentially making arguments that amount to "let people enjoy things" or "it's not that deep" (a horribly insulting thing to say about a work of art, by the way). the people making these posts often like to posture as though they're much smarter than the typical fandom bloggers on tumblr, but the way they talk about literature or cinema is still basically fandom-brained. instead of actually thinking, people are just defending their favs. well, i guess this is tumblr after all..

like, i just saw a post where saying "of mice and men is ableist" is presented as a ridiculous idea, not worth considering. but why not? considering the influence that the so-called "classics" have had on society, rather than simply saying they're above criticism, i'd say they should be examined all the more critically. some might dismiss that kind of criticism as "woke" but that doesn't necessarily mean it's shallow, or inaccurate, or that the person saying it is just trying to score cheap points.