#id be posting infodumps in the middle of the night

[high-metafive]

half tempted to make an smt based discord for no real reason other than meeting buddies and doing fan stuff etc etc. i wont do it but the thought... so tempting.....

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

hm. ive thought im possibly autistic before, and i have almost a blackout on the bingo, (just one i couldnt mark, the "even if you know they don't care" phrasing in the one about infodumping, if i know someone doesnt care abt what im talking abt id rather die than speak. or i keep starting a sentence, but they keep replying to other people and not me? guess ill die repeating the first few words/(sometimes i drop it and stop trying to say it. but it's still there rentfree in my head for HOURS.)).

i researched everything i had or thought i might have so fuckin much at that time. (4ish years ago. my focus at that time) i almost made my summer project for a credit about autism, i was looking at articles so much. (some were nd author 4 nd readers, but theres way too many allistic article writers and not nearly enough neurodivergent ones.). its hard to express certain things in the questionnaire [especially since i answered "how i feel today" when i took it, i took it before seeing the "answer like its your worst case day" post about diagnoses, but also symptoms no questions talked about]

yet?? the time i tried getting diagnosed, they said "no autism! just depressed" even tho so many of my traits are neurodivergent related symptoms and nowhere near depression related symptoms

(tbf, i now, few years later, think its adhd, not autism. which also fits most of my symptoms convergently, and my dad thinks he might have too but wont test, so genes fit that as well. so "no autism", but ALSO NOT "just depressed". also also i had a friend in middle school diagnosed with adhd, she shared her meds with me once, (dont remember context for why), and they helped. they worked as they were meant to. dont allistic people usually get high off adhd meds though? either way, i had too much going on that WERENT typical depression symptoms, that i included on the questions, for it to "just" be depression.)

...shit, do anons still have a character limit?

Hi there,

I’m not sure what question/advice you’re trying to ask, but I agree that there needs to be more neurodivergent writing.

I’m sorry if this didn’t answer your question. Feel free to send a message if you’d like.

Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ❤️

[transthaumaturge]

Squirrel Girl is Super Gay for her Roommate and I Want Everyone to Know

A gay infodump of sensible length by Rachel Tikvah

ALRIGHT, SO The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was the very first comic that I ever read regularly, back when I was looking for more stories with strong female protagonists but didn't really know why. Back then I just thought I really liked strong female characters and not that I was being gay on main, but now I know the truth. The comic had a 5-year run, and it was the first time that Squirrel Girl, AKA Doreen Green, had had her own series. She had a brief run in the mid-2000's where she was established as someone who could beat up Thanos with her bare hands well, more like squirrel hands but was mostly a joke character that happened to be incredibly buff and had indestructible plot armor. USG decided that Doreen's next major life goal would be to enroll in college to become a computer scientist, because her writer, Ryan North, is really into computer science and they basically gave him free rein over Squirrel Girl canon for five whole years. Like, a solid third of the plots are solved with some kind of computer science smarts. It’s really cool. Anyway this is Doreen in one of the gayest solo pictures I could find of her on short notice, which is also one of the variant covers from the actual series:

And this is her college roommate, Nancy Whitehead:

I'm like, 99% certain that Ryan North intended for them to end up as a couple and Disney!Marvel told him no. So he decided to make them AS GAY FOR EACH OTHER AS POSSIBLE without explicitly saying that they were a couple, and it ended up going under the radar. What follows is evidence for that claim. I’m going to put a "read more” after this so it doesn’t clutter everyone’s dashboards, but please read on if you’re interested. There’s a lot of cute gayness after this point. I’m also going to put all of the image descriptions at the end, since they take up a lot of space and I don’t want to break up the flow of the post. Finally, a quick spoiler alert for one arc in the middle of the series and a couple major plot points from the final few issues.

AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES

So for a while it was just kind of hinted at that they’re in a relationship, mostly because they were basically domestic life partners for like, two whole years in-universe before the comic run ended. But it really came to a head with an arc that was ran about 2/3 of the way through the series. Some pictures of them being, like, so cute together in general and/or talking about how much they care about each other before I get to that arc, though: 

Also Doreen describes her and Nancy's cat as "co-parented" in one of the last issues:

ANYWAY, THE ARC. THE HYPERTIME ARC. So one of the villains created for the Squirrel Girl run (I think they liked making weird shit canon just because they could) was a dude who went by the name "EpicCrimez". He’s a crime streamer. He livestreams his crimes to an online audience. I don't know. *Throws up hands*

He had some kind of laser gun that he built out of scavenged alien tech but didn't really know what it did, so he shot it at Doreen and Nancy for kicks. It shot them into hypertime, so suddenly the rest of the world was moving at a fraction of the pace that they were. They were moving so quickly that they were slated to live out their entire lives over the span of a single weekend if they didn't figure out how to reverse the effects. And...they did. Live out their entire lives together. For the two of them, they were the only two people in the world. There were other people, but they looked like statues unless you spent a very long time observing them. Doreen and Nancy grew old together in a world where they only had each other. This is an incredibly cute domestic scene from a little while after they found themselves in hypertime:

Gosh, I wish I could find more official art from that arc of them just living together, it was so good. But the point is, they were both old by the time that Nancy figured out how to get them out of hypertime. And it wasn't ideal. Their bio signatures were stored in the gun that EpicCrimez shot, and they could essentially "reboot" their bodies from when they were first shot and send themselves back into the regular timestream. But they wouldn't remember anything about the life that they had shared together. Nancy almost didn't want to do it. She raised the possibility of them just living out the rest of their lives together, because she didn't want to forget their life together. This is the conversation they had:

"I don't regret any of it. I don't want to lose it, and I don't want to lose us." "You're not getting rid of me that easily." Every time I look at that last picture, which took up an entire page of the comic, I start to cry. We’re seeing the final moments of two people who love each other more than anything, who were each other's entire lives, savoring their last moments together and wondering what the future holds. Sacrificing the life that they built together so that their younger selves could live a better, fuller one. Dying in each other’s arms, scared but comforted by the fact that they had each other. And then the arc ends, and they can't remember anything, so the status quo is restored. They have some paintings they made of each other while they were living together in hypertime, but they move on pretty quickly without ever knowing the significance of those lived decades. Still, it's clear in the arcs that follow and the adventures they embarked on afterward that they would die for each other. All of that continues until the end of the last arc. Their shared apartment's been blown up at this point by a supervillain who wanted to ruin Doreen’s life before eventually killing her. And in the aftermath of the fight, they're sifting through the wreckage for anything that survived (don't worry, the cat got out in time) when they find the picture that they painted of themselves during the hypertime arc:

They have a really cute conversation about how this chapter of their life is over, but they're going to be okay and they're going to build a new life together. And then Nancy basically tells Doreen that she can't live without her:

And then Doreen says something super queer-coded about how she likes the idea of the world knowing her secret identity now:

On the very last page of the comic, after all of the action is over and the series is about to end, they're talking to each other in what's supposed to be a twitter thread and Doreen asks Nancy a very thinly veiled question about whether she still wants to spend time with her now that her identity's out. She pretends it's about a class project, but it's really not about the class project. Here's how that conversation goes:

With no knowledge of what happened during the weekend when they shared their entire lives together, without ever having heard Doreen say it to her before, Nancy’s heart still knows which words to choose. "...you're not getting rid of me that easily. <3" I believe that the author of the series, Ryan North, did as much as he possibly could to portray them as a couple without saying it outright. And as the last piece of evidence to support that claim, I want to share a response he wrote in one of the series' last-ever letter columns:

"as for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical "Super" "Man" book without an equally hypothetical "Lois" "Lane"!" It's easy to write off this analysis as wishful thinking, or as a misreading of the subtext. But when the author of the series says that these two characters are meant to always be together and compares them to one of the most famous couples in any comic series ever, it's clear that there's more to it than that. 

Some Additional Thoughts: 1) Doreen and Nancy are both probably bisexual or pansexual, since they both expressed romantic interest in men throughout the series but they’re both clearly interested in each other too. There might be an element of demiromanticism there as well if part of the reason that they’re into each other romantically is because of how emotionally close they’ve become over the years. I want to make sure that that facet of their romantic orientations doesn’t get erased, because bi and pan folks get erased enough as it is. Neither Doreen nor Nancy are lesbians, just super-cool WLWs.

2) HERE’S WHAT THE ISSUE 50 VARIANT COVER LOOKED LIKE

That’s NOT a fun, totally straight way to pose with your platonic gal pal. They’re so incredibly cute together! I have no words! In Closing If you got this far, thank you so much for letting me talk to you about a comic that’s very important to me, and a couple in that comic that I care about very much. I spent way too long making this (six hours and counting), mostly in writing the image descriptions, and I’m very proud of my work but very tired now. Hyperfixation is a hell of a drug. If this resonated with you, please consider reblogging it so that more folks can see it. If not, even a like is nice. I’d also love to engage with people who have their own thoughts, so feel free to leave some comments in the notes if you’ve got an idea/a reaction/any additional cute Doreen/Nancy scenes that you’d like to share with me. At any rate, this post has gone on long enough and I don’t want to ask y’all to read any more than you have to. So have a great day, good morning / afternoon / night, and stay safe. Thanks again for reading! ~Rachel Tikvah, AKA @transthaumaturge Image Descriptions: Image 1: [ID: Squirrel Girl, a young woman with light skin, is posing in front of a brick wall that she seems to have crashed through, leaving a perfect outline of her body. She’s facing away but looking backwards over her shoulder at us and smiling. She’s flexing upward with her right arm and has her left fist resting on her left hip. Her sidekick, a squirrel named Tippy-Toe, is standing in the cutout she left in the wall and is making the same exact pose while wearing a light pink bow around her neck. Squirrel Girl is wearing brown lace-up boots, fur-lined hot pants over grey tights, and a brown fur-lined jacket with sleeves that come up to her forearms and a symbol of an acorn embroidered into the back. She’s also wearing a hairband with fake squirrel ears on it over short reddish-brown hair. She has a large squirrel tail coming out of her hot pants that sweeps down in a curve behind her lower legs. The illustration is drawn so that everything is bathed in the light of a sunset, and Doreen is casting shadows on the wall in front of her.] Image 2: [ID: Two frames depicting a scene between Doreen and Nancy in their college dorm room, with many cardboard boxes still not unpacked and sitting on a bare bed mattress. Nancy Whitehead is a young woman with dark brown skin and short, curly black hair. She's wearing black tights, a white dress-top, and a yellow cardigan over that. Her arms are crossed as she holds her white cat, Mew, against her chest. Doreen is wearing grey tights and a black long-sleeve shirt with a wide collar and white stripes across the chest. She's holding Tippy-Toe up to Nancy with both hands so she can see her better. The following dialogue ensues: Nancy: "A squirrel? But weren't you the one who was all about pets not being allowed in--" Doreen: "Yeah, I know. But this really interesting person I met today told me that obeying an unjust law is itself unjust." Nancy: "...You know, I was worried I'd get a weird roommate, but you're all right, Doreen Green."] Image 3: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are both sitting on a lavender-pink couch in nightclothes. Doreen has short, orange hair. She is wearing a loose-fitting grey long-sleeve shirt and steel-blue cutoff shorts; Nancy has cropped black hair. She is wearing a dark purple top with sleeves that come down to her upper arms, and loose-fitting navy-blue shorts that come down to her lower thighs. Doreen is side-hugging Nancy as she says, with an ecstatically happy smile, “Nancy, you’re the greatest. You know that, right?” Nancy gives Doreen a full smile as she responds, “I’d always suspected it, but it is nice to have it confirmed.”] Image 4: [ID: Nancy is shown from the shoulders up. She has short, curly black hair. She’s wearing large, disc-shaped gold dangle earrings, and a red jacket with prominent shoulders and a yellow collar. She’s fixing the observer with an angry, determined stare as she says, “She knows this man wouldn’t dream about betraying her, or he’d have to answer to me.”] Image 5: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are eating breakfast at the brown, circular kitchen table in their apartment. Doreen’s wearing a skin-tight athletic crop top that’s striped in black, red, white, and blue. Her arm muscles are well-defined and clearly visible as she puts a spoon in her mouth, closing her eyes as she does so. She has a bowl of cereal in front of her, and half a banana in front of that. Nancy is sitting to her left in a pink camisole top that’s also exposing her muscles, scrolling through something on her smartphone. Her hair is in a yellow fabric wrap that’s knotted on one side of her head. A cup of coffee sits in front of her. The clear blue sky is visible through the window centered on the wall behind them.] Image 6: [ID: Nancy and Doreen are facing away from the vantage point, walking towards an Empire State University campus building and holding hands with their fingers intertwined. Nancy is wearing a long knee-length grey coat and black knee-high boots, with a baby-blue side bag hanging from her left shoulder. Doreen is wearing a magenta sweatshirt with the periwinkle-lined hood down, light brown form-fitting denim pants, and black ankle-high boots, with a dark brown side bag hanging from her right shoulder. Trees and bushes hem the walkway in on either side. The building in front of them is dark red, with glass doors and a row of floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor. Doreen is saying “...we’re just going to have to take the long way around.”] Image 7: [ID: Doreen is facing towards the vantage point and is visible from the legs up, standing in front of a pile of rubble in the background. She’s wearing high-waisted light blue shorts over black tights, and a red windbreaker with sleeves ending at her upper arms that’s opened to reveal a white t-shirt underneath. Tippy-Toe is sitting on her shoulder. There are two people facing Doreen, each slightly in frame and silhouetted in black against the light of the setting sun. Doreen is fixing them with an angry, determined expression, resting her right fist at her hip while she gesticulates with her left hand and says, “So! I don’t know about you all, but Melissa kidnapping my friend and blowing up my life and my house and almost blowing up my co-parented cat makes me feel like giving her a piece of my mind. Friends...”] Image 8: [ID: A full comic page. EpicCrimez is looking like a dork in a green and black skin-tight jumpsuit, bright red ski goggles, and a green wig cap with his brown hair sticking out the back in a mullet. He’s standing inside a jewelry store and holding up a fist of expensive gems and pearls-on-strings as holds up his smartphone and speaks into it. He’s facing off against Squirrel Girl, with her allies Koi Boi and Chipmunk Hunk on her right, and Nancy and Brain Drain on the left. The following scene ensues: EpicCrimez: “And for those of you just tuning in, welcome to another successful heist by your boy EpicCrimez, streaming live! Now with 10% more live crime action than any other streamer! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!! I know some of you in EpicCrimez Nation have been forgetting to do that lately. Not acceptable.” Squirrel Girl: “You picked the wrong small business to rob, crime-initiator! Because this mall is protected by super heroes.” Brain Drain: “HELLO” SG: “And also an unrelated civilian friend I brought along too!” Nancy: (Not looking up from her phone) “ ‘Sup.” EC: “Check it out--Squirrel Girl and her miscellaneous friends are here! It’s action you won’t find on any other channel!” SG: “Are you...streaming your robberies?” (Nancy pockets her phone) EC: “Yeah I am! For money reasons! And with you “heroes” in it, I’ll make even more!” SG: (Whispering to Nancy:) “Question: a fight scene just gets him more traffic, which lets him profit from this crime even more--so does this mean we don’t fight him?” N: (Whispering back:) “I feel like letting him go causes more harm, but I look forward to us teasing apart the moral implications of this later.” SG: “Nice.” SG: (No longer whispering:) “I’ll like and subscribe, EpicCrimez! I’ll like fighting crime, and subscribe... to a worldview wherein the strong protect the weak!” EC: “Oh my gosh, are you like wholesome Spider-Man or something??” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Wholesome Spider-Man, Wholesome Spider-Man/Does whatever a wholesome spider can/Is he tough?/Listen bud/He’s here to hear you talk about your day and tell you it’ll all be fine while taking you out for your favorite meal for dinner because he knows you deserve it.”] Image 9: [ID: Another full comic page. Doreen and Nancy are in their apartment together, and their friends Tomas and Brian (AKA Chipmunk Hunk and Brain Drain respectively) are frozen as they look down at the machine that Nancy is on her knees in front of, working on. Nancy, barefoot, is wearing cerulean-blue athletic pants, a black long-sleeve spandex shirt without shoulders, and narrow-framed glasses. Her hair is partially covered by a yellow cloth head wrap tied on the left side, with black dreadlocks spilling out the side and back. The machine in front of her is made of dull grey metal, about a meter tall and roughly circular. Wires dangle out of a hatch that Nancy is fiddling with. Doreen is wearing a flowing, dark-purple pantsuit with wide, ankle-length legs and a halter top with the sleeves tied off at her shoulders. Her shoes are light-brown ankle boots with a horizontal gap on the bridge of each foot. Her wavy orange hair is parted in the middle and down past her shoulders. She looks incredibly cute. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “What do you think?” Nancy: “I think--come on you stupid screw--I think we’re still years away from this thing working, if it ever does. Who knew time machine construction is really hard, except of course for everyone who has attempted it?” (She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand) D: “Hah! No, I mean my new outfit.” N: (Looking up and checking her gf out:) “Doreen! You look amazing!!” D: “Liberated it from a very expensive department store uptown!” N: (Now standing) “Tony paid for it?” D: Tony will eventually discover he was kind enough to leave some expensive jewelry in trade, yes. I pinned a note to him so he knows.” N: “There really are advantages to being friends with billionaire playboy genius philanthropists.” D: “Right?!” N: (Taking Doreen’s hands in hers:) “It’s a shame we can’t take a picture of you all dolled up.” D: “Not without standing still for a few months, yeah. But I was thinking about that. I picked up something else at another store downtown. Thought maybe it could help us with that.” (Holding up a shopping bag with one hand while still holding onto Nancy’s hand with the other:) “Nancy Whitehead, I thought you and I might take up painting sometime.” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Tony Stark moves from meeting to meeting, his body accumulating dozens of notes every second. He sighs. Stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen. But then he smiles, because after all...stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen.”] Images 10-16: [ID: Several pages worth of comic frames, posted together to depict one scene. Doreen and Nancy are now old women, likely in their seventies or eighties. Doreen has short, grey hair. She’s wearing a tan button-up waistcoat and an orange ascot, brown flats with an olive-green skirt, knee-length and softly pleated. Her tail is sticking out the back of her skirt over the top, bushy and brown but with stiffer, less-dense hair. Nancy has her grey-black hair done up in a ponytail, a mass of tight curls behind her head. She’s wearing thin oval glasses, black dress pants, black flats, and a lavender cardigan with a flower motif along the edges, open to show the yellow-orange top underneath. They’re standing in front of a completed time machine. On either side are tall pieces of machinery, and in the middle is a round, flat metal dais hooked up to everything else with snaking cables. The following scene ensues: Nancy: “So...this is it, babe. The new machine.” Doreen: “Your secret project! Nancy, it looks like you started from scratch!” N: That’s because I did. I finally realized our old machine was never going to work. Maybe if we had a few more decades, but...there’s no time. And given that our backs are to the wall, I took a risk. I disassembled the gun right down to the metal, and examined all the parts. And I did find something: a data chip. Doreen, the gun stored our bio signatures when it us.” D: “What are you saying?” N: “I’m saying my new machine won’t send us back in time, and we’ll still have lost a weekend of real time. But it will restore our bodies to normal time.” D: (Hugging Nancy tight:) “Nancy! You saved us!!” N: (Resting her hands on Doreen’s shoulders:) “Not--quite. There’s a catch, Doreen. Our bodies will make it...but we won’t. Look, Doreen...I’m an old woman. I’ve spent most of my life in hypertime. This wasn’t how I saw my life going, but...I don’t regret any of it. I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t want to lose us.” D: “I don’t understand.” N: “It’s like restoring from backup. Our bodies will be restored to how they were the moment we were first hit. But--that necessarily includes our brains, too. Everything we’ve done since we entered hypertime--our entire lives spent together...we’ll forget.” (She looks at Doreen in distress) D: “I don’t either, Nancy. You’ve been the most important person in my life. But if we do go back--we can do it again. All of it. It might not happen again quite the same way, but--well, like you say...we’ll have all the time in the world.” N: (Their faces inches apart, they both tilt their heads down and smile sadly:) “Twist my arm, why don’t you.” (They both step onto the dais holding hands, and blue energy starts to ripple around them:) “You filled up Spidey’s web-shooters before we go?” D: “Yep. Again.” N: “You and me, saving the world.” D: “Well,” (holding Nancy’s hand in both of her own) "No reason we can’t do it twice.” N: “You know, there’s a chance things could turn out differently, now that we’ll have video games to distract us. In 40 years we might decide we don’t like hanging out after all.” D: (Hugging Nancy even tighter than before as the energy from the time machine starts to envelop them, resting her face in the nape of Nancy’s neck:) “Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”] Image 17: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are sifting through the charred rubble of their apartment as night starts to fall around them. Doreen is wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue t-shirt with a Captain America star in the middle. Over top of the shirt, she’s wearing a dark reddish-brown leather vest with four metal studs at the four points of the folded-out collar. Nancy is wearing black tights and a light green long-sleeve shirt with olive-green sleeves. The front of the shirt has a picture of Cat-Thor, Cat God of Cat Thunder’s head on it. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “So I know we’re only a few hours into it, Nancy, but I think my identity being public isn’t gonna be as bad as I thought.” Nancy: “Oh?” D: “Yeah, Tony’s given me lots of tips, and it does honestly help to know that my parents are protected by a robot tree with laser eyes and my friends live in a city with the most super heroes per square mile.” N: “Most super villains too, but--Hold on. I think I found it.” (Nancy lifts a picture frame out of the wreckage, charred around the edges but otherwise no worse for wear. It has a painting inside of it of Doreen and Nancy, arm-in-arm, from hypertime. Doreen is wearing the lavender pantsuit from before, and Nancy is wearing a tight-fitting lilac dress.) “...And it looks like you and I made it through just fine.”] Images 18-19: [ID: Two later comic panels from the same scene. They’re wearing the same outfits, but Nancy’s now cradling her white cat, Mew, in the crook of her left arm while she holds onto the picture frame with her right hand. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “Come on, let’s talk about it! If we’re starting a new chapter in our lives, and we can decide what’s in it, what do you want it to contain?” Nancy: “Doreen...” D: “What are the three things you can’t live without, Nancy Whitehead?” N: (Holding up the picture so that Doreen can see it:) “Fine. If you must know, all this girl needs to be happy are cats and squirrels and knitting and computers and friends and secret tattoos and super heroes and lots and lots of love. Also food and shelter. And water. And internet.” D: “That’s more than three things.”] Image 20: [ID: Same scene as before, a single frame with a close-up on Doreen from her chest upwards. Doreen cups her chin with one of her hands and says, “Honestly--I thought about it. I really did. But I realized that where I am now, I’m safe and I’m loved and I kinda like the idea of not having to lie to people anymore, you know? Even if it is just a lie of omission. I want to share my whole self with the world. I don’t want to have to hide who I am anymore.”] Image 21: [ID: Something resembling a twitter thread, with dialogue between Nancy and Doreen stacked chronologically as horizontal boxes. Their respective names and handles are at the top of each of their comments. Nancy is Nancy W. and @sewwiththeflo, Doreen is Squirrel Girl and @unbeatablesg. The following conversation ensues: Nancy: “You think I’d leave you high and dry??” Doreen: “I think I don’t want our lateness harming your grades and therefore harming your post-secondary education or career choices and therefore harming your ENTIRE LIFE?!” “So yeah I think you should switch to someone else, real talk. I honestly don’t mind, I promise.” Nancy: “Please. If there’s one thing I know about you, about me, and about how we spend our future together, it’s this. Doreen Green...” “...you’re not getting rid of me that easily. <3″] Image 22: [ID: A paragraph of text, black text on a yellow background. “As for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical “Super” “Man” book without an equally hypothetical “Lois” “Lane”!”] Image 23: [ID: A group picture of Squirrel Girl and friends sitting down on a grassy hill and watching the sunset together. Kraven the Hunter is in the foreground for some reason, looking almost directly at the camera. In the background we see Koi Boi, Mary Mahajan, Chipmunk Hunk, Brain Drain, and Mew the Cat. In the middle of the shot, Doreen and Nancy sit together. Doreen is in her superhero outfit with Tippy-Toe on her right shoulder, and Nancy is in a yellow cardigan and jeans on Doreen’s left. They’re holding hands, fingers intertwined, as Nancy leans against Doreen with her whole body. Their heads are tilted inward towards each other, the side of Doreen’s head touching the side of Nancy’s, as they look off into the distance together.]

[ablednt]

OH MY GOD in your text post abt being called problematic as a teenager, I had the same thing happen to me. Everyone complained to a moderator about stuff I did (I'd say the worst of it was constantly forgetting things on the blacklist, but I would always go back and spoil it when reminded and I mostly forgot squicks because i shared triggers with a lot of the people in there) instead of taking it directly to me and when I got removed (in the middle of the night without warning), the mod told me I had to apologize to everyone if I wanted back in. Would not tell me what I had done wrong to who specifically, I was just supposed to remember. And when I asked for their discords the mod wouldnt give them to me because I "might make them uncomfortable". How the FUCK was I supposed to apologize to them???

Anyway. On the list of things I did wrong were two "personal gripes" equating to "you talk too much" and "you manage to throw yourself off track during conversations" and I like... half the people in the gc also did that. It was full of people with ADHD. I gave up lol

NO BUT TALKING TOO MUCH WAS FOR REAL ONE OF THE BIGGEST ISSUES THEY HAD LMFAOOO I was also called annoying for infodumping about the fandom the discord server was dedicated to IN the channels meant for discussing or posting about canon. Like literally just "yes you're in the right channel we just think it's annoying when u post specifically <3"

Anyway the ableism of it all was so bad that I wrote out a google doc for myself with ideas on how to mask what I soon learned was ADHD, autism, and trauma lmao. Here's a fun excerpt

[Image ID: a cropped google document in dark mode with a black background and white text. It reads;

If you’re upset and want to vent, consider going to your vent blog, or going to a more private place! Before venting something ask yourself the following questions: will hearing your upsetedness leave others feeling burdened or guilty? Is this something you can work out on your own? Is this a topic that others can comment on without feeling like they will insult you? If the answer to any of these questions is a negative, then consider venting in another place or directing your energy to another activity! 

Is there something you want validation on? It’s okay to seek validation, but you need to be thoughtful of where, when, and with who! Try to find people who would find enjoyment in whatever it is you created, or who share similar experiences! If you still can’t think of anything, it’s okay to try and validate it yourself! You need to work on loving yourself, instead of making others feel responsible!

Instead of thinking the worst of yourself (and by extension people’s treatment or opinions of you) try and think of something positive! Instead of brooding over something you dislike about someone, try complimenting them on something you do like! If you feel uncomfortable with this, you can always send them a nice anon if you know their blog.

End ID]

Like I really thought this was the epitome of health and not toxic positivity at all and on one hand it's sad because I was a kid just literally being abused and gaslit at this point on the other hand it's so fucking funny.