#like i don't want to make somebody with autism feel bad about themselves and i know i phrased things in a way that can be read like that

[maybelia]

I mean I like my therapist, and she's usually correct about most things at the end of the day

But fuck

Like her response to me telling her I hate myself and feel like a social failure because i failed at an interview for a program in my university was to tell me she thinks I might be on the autism spectrum,

and that means according to her that I shouldn't have even fucking bothered trying to go for that program "because you probably got rejected because they were looking for a more neurotypical brain" and I "probably just got stressed and reverted back to my instinctual total lack of social skills" and I shouldn't even try to fucking correct it because I can't

And I don't know

Like what the actual fuck

[ihopesocomic]

You've probably gotten a lot of messages like this before but I wanted to just thank you guys for showing a form of abuse that isn't only physical and still calling it abuse and not hand waving it away. So many stories that include abuse tend to assume that it only counts as abuse if it's physical. They ignore mental and emotional abuse entirely and if they do acknowledge it, it's portrayed as not that bad and something you need to forgive your abusers for.

As someone who's still coming to terms with my own experience with a similar kind of abuse that Adamant and Hope faced, your comic makes me feel seen and validated in my feelings and especially in my choice to cut off the family that hurt me. Seeing Adamant and Hope leave and not be shunned for it was such a relief and breath of fresh air after so much media tells you to forgive people who hurt you, especially if they are family.

again, thank you. I'm forever thankful this comic exists. you two are fantastic and I can't wait to see where the story goes :)

Thank you so so much, anon. We feel mixed emotions when we get asks like this because it's nice to hear but it's also so hard to hear our readers dealing with what we've dealt with and it's also hard to articulate how much we hear you and how sorry we are.

What you're saying is such a good point. Emotional abuse is so often discounted and watered down and even disregarded as being hurtful. It also doesn't help that even physical abuse gets the same treatment. Especially when it's just dismissed as 'discipline' or a 'loss of control'. But going back to emotional abuse, this is one of the main things that we wanted to so desperately try and portray vs. how My Pride had portrayed it. The very idea that emotional abuse at the hands of your family isn't actually abuse because it's just them loving you and 'wanting what's best for you'.

Which is so ridiculous because overprotectiveness can very, very easily mutate into smothering and parents feeling that their children have zero agency or identity outside of themselves, especially if you're disabled. Parents like this don't deserve humanisation or sympathy. Their actions are possessive and unhealthy and may be a indication they're suffering from a form of abuse themselves.

My Pride could have tackled this with Powerstrike. She lost her mate and son. Her culture is heavily against her and her own sense of agency. However, the script is too busy highlighting how she feels 'weak' because her daughter is disabled and can seemingly do nothing to fulfil this unachievable image she has of her.

It's how you know the script was written by an able-bodied individual, somebody who will never know that this kind of thing makes you feel like utter dirt as somebody who isn't a "perfect" neurotypical, able-bodied individual.

Even if the creator is neurodivergent herself, this was such a huge ball to drop. Powerstrike saying 'whenever I look at you, I only see what you could have been' is very much a fucking Powerstrike problem and she deserves to rot for it. Being viewed under the lens of what you "could" be if you didn't have a physical disability or conditions that cause developmental delays like autism is downright devastating for those who have them and fuck that show for trying to humanise Powerstrike by having her spout such garbage.

There was nothing remotely sympathetic about that speech. It was just Powerstrike whining about having a disabled daughter and the context of the speech is that she was called out for not caring about her children and the creator somehow thinks that her child being disabled.... excuses that?

I apologise for going off on a rant, but Powerstrike's speech fits the bill exactly with what what you're talking about because MP fans have fallen for it hook, line and sinker and refused to see how gross it is because Powerstrike never physically abused Nothing like Quickmane did. Even though it is very obviously emotional abuse and manipulation.

It'd be great if we could just assume this is just superfans defending their favourite show's honour because god forbid something they enjoy is delivering problematic messages like how parents who have an ableist perception of their children deserve sympathy, but we've had people come to us and directly point to the show's writing as a reason for them failing to identify valid forms of abuse and therefore feel they cannot act upon it or seek help for it.

May not be what the creator intended because she was presumably high off her own fumes when she wrote speeches like Powerstrike's, but that's the reality and making excuses for it like MP fans have isn't going to make the issue get any better.

Doing this comic has allowed me to confront the same feelings you have also had to contend with, anon, and I'm very happy we have been able to share something together there. You and others like you also make me feel less alone and less angry about what I've experienced and I hope you never forget that. - RJ

[monsterswithimagines]

Undisclosed Desires- Part 26

Joe Goldberg x female!Reader

Summary: Twenty minutes before he would have met Guinevere Beck, Joe meets you instead. You intruige him, but it will soon become clear that there is something off about you.

Words: 765

Masterlist

Minor disclaimer bc I don't wanna get cancelled: 99.999999 to infinity% of people with autism will not become stalkers. The person in this part is a bad apple. People using the autism as an excuse for the way he acts is me commenting on how society at large will use anything as an excuse for the way a man behaves towards a woman. Am I making sense? Also, this is based on a real thing, but not very accurately.

You sit down at Nadia's desk.

I’m sitting on the edge of her bed, and the distance between us feels too far, but I leave it. I don't think you want me any closer right now. There's probably no rage room in the world that can fix what you're feeling.

“So I reported him. Mitch,” you say, drumming your fingers against the tabletop. “I felt unsure about it from the start, but I just wanted him to stop bothering me, you know? Anyway, everyone had been looking away while he was… But once I called the police, suddenly everyone–” You pause. “And I mean everyone, Joe. His family, our teachers, even the police themselves! Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was telling me to withdraw my statement. They said: ‘well, he has autism. He doesn't know what he's doing. You'll be ruining his life!’”

I want to go back in time and punch everyone who told you not to protect yourself - and I think you can tell. My hands ball into fists on my knees. You smile sadly at me and continue:

“So I told the police I changed my mind, and that I didn't want to press charges after all. That's what it is in English, right? Press charges?” you ask this of Nadia.

She shrugs.

“Close enough.”

“Right. So. I did that. I told the police I wouldn't press charges if Mitch agreed to just leave me alone, and he agreed to that at the time. Only he didn't leave me alone after. He started following me everywhere I went. I could be walking my aunt's dog and I'd feel his eyes on me. I think he even hacked into my email, but I can't prove that. Once, though, I caught him–” you cut yourself off.

Nadia speaks up:

“She's too embarrassed to say it, so I will: he was standing by her bedroom window, masturbating.”

“I'm not embarrassed,” you say. “I’m disgusted. It was disgusting.”

“Same difference.”

“So, what?” I ask. “Is that why you came to America? Did you run away?”

“No,” you say, but a complicated emotion crosses your face that makes me wonder. “In high school, teachers kept telling me to just keep the peace. They said that once I graduated, I'd never have to deal with Mitch again. Only I graduated, and I moved to Utrecht to go to school there and guess what? It didn't make a difference. I got so tired and I just… I figured if I just kept talking nicely to him, at least it all wouldn't escalate. So that's what I did.

“But that just made him convinced we were in some kind of relationship, or something. And when I left for New York, I mean, that wasn't because of him. It was because of the job and because I'd always wanted to. But I can't say that Mitch finally leaving me the fuck alone wasn't a great side effect. I thought he must have seen me going that far away as some kind of breakup, or he'd gotten bored, or he'd found somebody else… I don't know.”

“But then you came back,” I offer.

“Yes,” you agree, and the way you look at me is intense. “But then I came back. I'm sure if he hadn't gone and died, he would’ve showed up in person one of these days.”

This is a pretty big secret to keep from your boyfriend.

The three of us fall silent. I can tell Nadia wants to say something, and I think you can tell I want to say something. But none of us say anything, because there isn't anything to say.

“You probably think I should have told you,” you say. It's like you're reading my mind.

“I can understand why you didn't.”

“But you still think I should have.”

And I would have made it far more painful than I did.

“Fine. Yes,” I admit.

You should have told me, (Y/n). You should have told me just how bad this was so I could have killed this motherfucker the first day I got here. No matter how jetlagged I was, I would have found the energy to put him in the ground.

“Well,” Nadia says, clearing her throat. “Anyway. He's dead now, so. It's over.”

“As if,” you say. “He's been texting me incessantly for two weeks. The police are going to want to ask me questions.”

“But he killed himself,” Nadia says. “He was mentally ill. What's to ask?”

For some reason, your eyes meet mine. But only for the briefest moment. Then, you look away.

“I hope you're right,” you say. And then, smiling weakly, you add: “so, what's for dinner?”

[captain-crowfish]

And here's a rant about how the Mormon church perceives people with autism (this can include other forms of neurodivergency)

In heaven, regardless of which level of heaven you end up in, your body is now perfect. Any "imperfections" (I.E. maybe your ears are slightly asymmetrical, or you have a floating rib, or a permanent scar from an injury) are now erased. This also includes people who are physically disabled or transgender.

Now, that in of itself is kind of gross, even if the Mormons think their intentions are good; you're perfect before you go to Earth and after physical death you return to heaven all the same. Never mind if somebody altered their body enough to feel more comfortable in it or learned to love themselves in spite of their disability, that's all gone now.

And regarding the main reason why I'm typing this in the first place: what about people who are born disabled or neurodivergent?

My younger brother is on the autism spectrum, and it's easy to tell even from a glance. At the moment of typing this he's in high school now, even though cognitively he is on par with a toddler. He absolutely cannot and should not be left alone unsupervised and has put his own life in danger multiple times within the past two years without being able to comprehend why.

I've been told that when we see each other in heaven after we die, he won't be Autistic at all. He'll act like any neurotypical individual.

And he'll say to our family "Thank you for treating me with kindness."

Now, before I go on any further I feel as though it is necessary for me to express that I do not reject the concept of an after-life or even a "before-life" entirely, merely I (perhaps naively) cling on to the core religous beliefs of heaven and being kind to everyone and always having some omnipotent genderless deity because I find them comforting. I have slipped into several pits of existential fear throughout my life and at the moment I don't see myself becoming a full-on atheist.

Back to the subject at hand, "Thank you for treating me with kindness." Rubs me VERY much the wrong way.

For starters, my brother (still) does not fully understand the concepts of right and wrong. That's the simplest way of putting it. I don't think he understands most forms of discipline (the only way that's seemed to work aside from yelling at him and making him sob and scream is making him write out "I will not put water in the soap dispenser" multiple times. He knows that if he does that action again, he will have to write more sentences. And he doesn't like it.

To further elaborate, he never acts maliciously (even though it's hard to tell sometimes.). He never has done anything "bad" with the intention of making anyone pissed off. And when my parents do discipline him to the point of meltdown, nearly every time it's in regards to his own safety or something that will greatly inconvenience them, literally or emotionally.

People should not be shamed for their first, gut-instinct, emotional response. If my parents do yell at him, usually they try to explain to him in a more comforting way later. Which he still gets upset by.

Do you start to see where I'm going with this? We try to be as nice to him as we possibly, humanly can even while being under constant stress from his tendency to be unpredictable, and he reacts as though, and I'm only saying this for the sake of making a comparison, like somebody smashed his electronics out of pure spite.

Secondly, Mormons believe we experience earthly life so we have the ability to make choices. The implications of that sentence alone are kind of terrifying but that's not the point I'm trying to make here. My point is, why would you choose to be born like this? When somebody's mental or physical capabilities are limited to any extent, so much that you often can't make the choices you want to make because of those setbacks, why would you voluntarily sign up just to be a morality check for other people?

Thirdly, and this co-insides with my second point, how do you think it feels when somebody who is, for lack of a better term, cognitive enough to comprehend all this is told that their existence is, according to the plan of salvation, nothing than a morality check? Another one of God's tests?

You sit in your darkened bedroom on a bleak Sunday night and realize what the church truly thinks about you for the first time. Your autism diagnosis denies you any agency of your own, and yet you're "normal enough" to still understand and experience choice, consequence and autonomy on nearly the same level that Neurotypical people have. And now you catch yourself wishing you weren't cognitive enough to realize the full extent of this horribly flawed design. You wish you were more like your brother.

I am you. You want to know what I feel when I fully realize the extent of living as nothing more than a morality check? I feel angry. I feel betrayed. I feel WORTHLESS. I feel horrified that this could be a big factor as to why my parents refuse to ever take me seriously until I've collapsed on the floor. Literally, this has happened more than once.

Fourth (yes, Oh God, there's more.) The plan of salvation also illustrates that, before we are born, we choose our families, our parents specifically. And that's another very icky implication/rhetoric that can be (and most likely has been) used to keep family members in abusive situations.

In case I haven't made it clear already, I am also on the autism spectrum. I can't list off everything that means for me all at once, but I have trouble detecting sarcasm and I am extremely bothered by loud, unexpected noises.

Now, something I think more people should understand, (especially my parents) is that disability accommodations are not a one-size-fits-all plan, nor will they ever be. I saw a great post on this website once that said something along the lines of "the same flashing lights on a fire alarm that are used to alert deaf people might give someone else an epileptic seizure." And that helped me come to learn more about the severity of a situation that has been plaguing me almost my entire life.

My brother, being Autistic, often Stims. Either as a way to express/filter excitement or as a form of self-regulation.

Very SUDDENLY and LOUDLY.

and those two adjectives together used to describe any sound are noises that I cannot fucking stand.

And as much as my parents think otherwise, I'm not TRYING to PURPOSEFULLY stop him from expressing/filtering excitement or self regulating. My first GUT REACTION is to tell him to be quiet, right after feeling an enormous amount of discomfort. I never hurt him in any way because I WANT to, but because my overstimulation is firing on all cylinders and 'telling me' that I HAVE to. It is never entirely a conscious decision for me to react in the ways that my parents disapprove of because they are "not nice."

My dad swears up and down that this is a behavior that I can unlearn. It's been 6 or so years of him telling me that and it's only made me afraid of him, too. Because he refuses to see the situation from my actual perspective.

And of course, every summer my brother is home from school, and every summer I realize more and more how on edge I really feel, and how my parents have been the real root cause of my CPTSD the whole fucking time.

So back to the subject of heaven, if my before-earthly-life heavenly self, in all my divine-ish wisdom, looked at my parents and saw in the future how much they would disregard me, why the FUCK did I choose them?

And if my brother, being his before-earthly-life heavenly self, in all his divine-ish wisdom, looked at my parents and me and saw in the future how much I would suffer and how much we would all be torn apart because of his existence, WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY did he choose to live with us, when my suffering is not voluntary?

So, to conclude, In terms of how much my parents are doing in terms of the walking, talking morality tests, they're flunking HARD when it comes to me. I'm not surprised that they don't even fucking realize it.

When it comes to my brother, I can only guess that he thinks he's suffering, but my parents are doing their best to accommodate his needs (and absolutely none of mine). Who determines the final score? My brother or God?

Of course, given the same logic, apparently I'm being scored on my involuntary reactions to my brother's behavior. And I'd be going to hell. We're here on Earth to make choices and I choose to suffer as little as I possibly can (which isn't fucking saying much.) And because I APPARENTLY have the choice to feel discomfort or not, therefore I'm making poor decisions and deserve damnation for the same fucking reason I was put on this Earth.

Mormons, do you want to elaborate on all this? Is there anything you could possibly say to my face besides "God and heaven work in mysterious ways." FUCK this. FUCK you and your views on autism. FUCK my parents and FUCK your Mormon Jesus with the European complexion.

My life is hell.

[cookii-moon]

I'm here to spread my Ninjago neurodiversity headcanons

because this fandom does not have enough of it and I felt like it. Also because i missed neurodiversity week by one day.

uhh yeah. I wanted to have an art too but I didn't expect posting this so soon-

Anyways.

Zaneeee the classic yay.

He's definitely neurodivergent.

I don't think he'd identify as anything in particular, but he identifies as neurodivergent cuz he's a nindroid and because of that doesn't fit in or think like neurotypicals.

He's a bit of an outlier because of that tho, even in neurodiverse places.

He's decently public because he's too innocent to see how anything could go bad just because he shared it. Poor Zane, bless him :,) he definitely ended up being harassed at least once.

Cole because everybody overlooks him and I'm disappointed /hj

Okay this man is autistic. Tell me otherwise. Tell me otherwise right now. Like have you seen him.

He's very closed off about being autistic. I feel like Lou was definitely not very accommodating of it and encouraged him to mask n stuff, (which btw can lead to a huge number of anxiety and self worth issues later down the line, so do not force people to mask).

There's a lot of stigma associated with autistic people that I feel like Cole definitely wouldn't enjoy, so he keeps it pretty tight under wraps and tries to mask when he can.

He especially doesn't like telling people he knows because he doesn't want a close friend to potentially start treating him like an infant or helpless, or assume he has no emotions or starting to distance themselves from him.

He hid it from the Ninja for the first few seasons. Around after S4-5 when he and Jay had become close again he decided to tell him. I feel like he was jealous or impressed by how open Jay is in comparison (we'll get to him in a moment) and how accepting the others were. Jay's reaction is easily summed up as *HAPPY NEURODIVERGENT SOLIDARITY SCREAMING* but also "I feel stupid for not connecting the dots" and then they went from bffs to... also bffs. But now they get to make adhd and autism jokes together.

Jay helped him be more comfortable and feel more confident in himself and he finally told the other Ninja after DotD because he ended up experiencing several massive sensory overloads at some point, since being autistic made it so that the issues you'd have from finally being able to touch things after a year or two would've been amplified ten fold, so he kinda had to tell them because it stuck around for several weeks.

He still isn't very public about it towards strangers, but he's getting better about feeling comfortable with it himself and not, yknow, experiencing social anxiety 24/7 around his friends.

He's definitely on like the mild-mid end of the spectrum. He doesn't need too many accommodations, but he does experience sensory issues and might need alternative explanations for some things.

He's usually pretty closed off when he first gets to know somebody, but overtime when he does get to know them and becomes comfortable with them he gets pretty social and sarcastic with them, which doesn't always go well since he can't tell when someone gets legitimately hurt or offended or when it's just part of the joke, so being more public about it with his friends has made it so they can communicate better with that type of stuff :D

...You may notice that this one is substantially longer than the rest and the reason for that is because I'm autistic so I feel more confident about writing about an autistic character. And also because autistic Cole makes me feel represented because way too many autistic characters are either robots (which is fine, but one of my symptoms is I have difficult to relate to those types of characters) or very stereotypical. So.

I try to keep the others shorter because I don't trust myself as much with those LOL.

Also he may be colorblind, but he's not sure.

Uhh Jay

Yeah

He has adhd, probably a comorbidity too like OCD or smthn. He's in the very hyperactive group, and he's pretty public about it because he feels comfortable with who he is and doesn't really care if some idiot takes issue with it (or well, pretends like he doesn't care, except he actually does)

And ye, that's uh, about all I have to say because I'm super hungry and tired sooo

Byeeee

[some-pers0n]

On a related note to that proship Wikipedia page, there's actually a hilarious instance of a radqueer *giving a college speech about the radqueer community and recording it online* lol. Moons above, some people are just so terminally online lol. Bonus points for the fact that the speech doesn't even make sense unless you're intensely following discourse around radqueers, much less even know what they are.

www.archive.org/details/VriskerFic8onRadqueerSpeech

Listening to it and just. jesus christ what am I even hearing. "Transableism isn't ableist because being disabled isn't a bad thing and wanting to be disabled isn't bad" imagine being a college prof and hearing that.

(More inane ramblings below the cut + live reactions)

Not to also mention it just baffles me the idea of, say for example, neurotypicals identifying as "transautistic" because they feel like they are autistic. You can't be serious with me right now. You cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that you are oppressed because you identify as disabled despite being able-bodied. I get it somewhat if it's a OSDD/DID thing and you've got alters and whatnot, but it's just asinine. It's beyond terminally online. The second hand embarrassment from seeing that this was handed in as a project is so intense. You'd have to be toiling in the darkest, deepest parts of the internet to even understand this.

"It can't be offensive because most of us are minorities" ??? WHAT EVEN IS THAT LOGIC??? Like can you apply that logic to fandom racism? Like imagine people calling somebody out for racism and they went "erm I polled my followers and most of them were queer minorities so it's not offensive" are you kidding me.

Oh my fucking god of course they're a Vriska kinnie. The way they're describing being "transcharacter" makes me nauseous like... Okay, fine, I understand kinning characters. This stuff here sounds like a cult or signs of some sort of dissociative disorder. My sibling in science you need help if you genuinely feel like harming yourself over not being a fictional character.

"I'm trans-half-blind" be serious with me rn. Be fr. Be honest with me here

I do very much agree that harassment and doxing is utterly vile and I feel for these people and how they've been affected, but I don't think suffering immediately makes their identity any more valid. You can't just be. transdisabled. You are either able-bodied and wearing an eyepatch for fun or you're actually disabled.

The thing with these transdisabled people is that they never identify with "gross" disabilities either. Where's the transdisabled people who want feeding tubes. Where's the transdisabled people who claim that they've got dysphoria because they don't have a oxygen tank. What about the disabilities that aren't easy to make you look cool and edgy? Don't got dysphoria for that now, huh?

God I hate fakeclaiming people with mental disorders but I also think that you gotta have at least something with you in order to feel dysphoria about not being a system or not having autism.

Again imagine being a normal well-adjusted person who (at most) has a Snapchat and Instagram account and hearing this. They just talk about this stuff like you're already aware of it. Goodness gracious. The thing here too is that I'd be terrified of giving them a bad mark for being, well, incomprehensible in case they decided to take that as me being a violent bigot and further harm themselves.

What are they even talking about right now

Why are they talking about the Oxford dictionary

"This calls us attention seekers. Well, don't you know that attention seeking is a sign of emotional neglect?" you didn't debunk the argument. You just said: "Well, yeah, maybe we are attention seekers, but don't you know we're also traumatized? Boom, gotcha there. Now you can't criticize us because we're traumatized"

OH MY GOD THEY ACTUALLY WEAR AN EYEPATCH WDHUAIWHAIUA--

Oh how brilliant of a conclusion: people are people and not everyone's emotions and experiences are the same. How ground-breaking. Curious, I wonder what it would be like to ask a person who has a missing or damaged eye their thoughts and opinions on a transcharacter Viriska wearing an eyepatch and telling people they're disabled. I wonder how they'd feel.

God this whole thing is so immature. They call anybody who disagrees with them a child when they themselves have been doing little more than make cheap arguments, curse, and barely formulate even a single coherent thesis statement. It doesn't even sound like they have a script, more like ramblings straight from the heart.

Kid, I don't really care if a person is transID or whatever it's called. I care if they're a decent person more than anything. I'm not going to maul them and drag them into the streets for people to stone to death. Why do you act like you're oppressed in this way? I get that you and your friends have been mistreated, but to be honest it's still like. ridiculous to me.

Please don't...gouge your eye out...

I know I've said it before but GOD imagine being a prof and receiving this. I would be utterly terrified and don't know what to do because it's clear the person is not exactly in. stable condition mentally.

[yeswevegotavideo]

Support AO3, or don't, but leave it the fuck alone

(I wrote this rant quite a while ago and never posted it, but seeing as people are On That Bullshit again, I figured it was time.) 

I feel like people (you know which) who bitch about AO3 holding fundraisers to support their business, even though said business hosts content they don't approve of, are rather analogous to anti-vaxxers, or anti-unionists.

The online fanfiction world before OTW/AO3 was much more dangerous and much less regulated and much harder to control, and innocent people were getting hurt all over the place.

Content creators could destroy other people's work with impunity under "copyright infringement" claims that weren't even valid. Web hosts could discover that a fic writer was posting written erotica or fanfiction in general (see copyright infringement above), on their servers (usually after being alerted to it by someone with a grudge) and respond by taking down their website, deleting their work, and banning their IP. They didn't even have to tell you if they did this, you could discover it by accident. And this happened a lot, because companies were skittish about anything even potentially legally problematic, so they erred on the side of enormous banhammers.

And on the fan creation side, there were no real content standards. There was no way to know whether what you were reading was potentially triggering. Tagging wasn't a thing. Warnings weren't standardized. There was no system, no way of either protecting yourself OR your work. And trying to find things you wanted to see was sometimes even harder, and involved associating with people you might not want to. I entered fandom (at 17, I might add) at a time when the primary way to get fanfic was through Yahoo!groups. Message boards. I had no control over who I did and didn't have contact with. I honestly don't even remember if there WAS a way to block people. And there were definitely some creeps. There were definitely some people I would never want to associate with.

When the OTW was created, it set out to fix both of these problems at once. The legal side dealt with the fair use and transformative aspects of fanwork, and AO3 dealt with the content moderation aspect. And I think they've done a damn good job with both. Of course it's not perfect, nothing is perfect, but the fact that I can go to AO3 right now and filter out just about anything I don't want to see with extremely good results tells me that they've achieved what they set out to achieve.

But people who weren't here for the before don't see the former world. Anti-vaxxers don't think of disease as a threat because they haven't been exposed to it. Anti-unionists think unions are worthless because they weren't there for life before the 40 hour work week and child labor laws. They only see what they can criticize now.

And beyond that, they come to their criticism with misinformed, ignorant, and harmful ideas about how the whole thing works. Like anti-vaxxers and their autism myth, and anti-unionists and their worship of capitalism, these people have a worldview that, frankly, scares the shit out of me.

They seem genuinely convinced that writing about something means fully endorsing it. That only the sick and twisted and perverted would ever, could ever, write offensive or gross things, write about characters who enjoy those things, explore scenarios that would be horrific in reality. That fiction not only influences and is influenced by society, but creates reality, IS reality. That abstract concepts in a story are, themselves, crimes against humanity equivalent to rape and murder. That these things ARE rape and murder. That writing a story that doesn’t explicitly condemn rape or abuse is not only endorsement but incitement. As if fiction writers were causing these things to happen in real life, to real people. They’ve said as much. If you write rape fantasies, you’re a rapist. If you write incest, you’re a pedophile. Period, end-of, no gray area, no exceptions. Though of course, the only writers for whom this is true are fanfiction writers.

Funny how they’re not going after the published authors like this. Is anyone seriously going around calling Stephen King a pedophile because IT has a weird, uncomfortable and frankly unnecessary child orgy in it? Because it totally does, for some weird fucking reason. (Coke. The reason was lots, and lots, of coke. Also the 70s.) He made thousands of dollars off of that story, he will collect royalties on it for the rest of his life. But no, he’s fine, we can leave his career alone, his book can stay on the shelf. We should definitely instead destroy the unpaid passion project of some 40-year-old housewife who writes out her fantasies to feel just a little less alone, some 16-year-old abuse victim trying to make sense of the things currently happening to her, some 25-year-old receptionist whose only escape from her soul-crushing job is exploring the inner workings of human dynamics through the characters she most resonates with, or finds the most fascinating, or most inspire her to write. These are the real villains, am I right?

AO3 protects ALL OF FANDOM and yes, this includes the unsavory and the distasteful, because it must. Because content censorship is creative death. Once an authority is allowed to decide what is and isn’t acceptable subject matter, it’s a matter of time before those subjective, arbitrary decisions start affecting people it shouldn’t. What happens when one of the decision makers goes power-mad? When they get into a disagreement with a writer and decide, oops, all their shit is banned, and anyone who commented positive things on their stories is banned, too. When somebody gets hired to do the job, and you know what they really find inappropriate and gross? Interracial dating. When somebody decides to erase all the stories involving the “wrong” kind of trans person. Or all trans people. It’s not remotely farfetched to imagine something like this happening. One trip to Fanlore and you can find dozens of incidents like it in the past. Over, and over, and over.

And the thing is, once these tools are put into place, they are never, ever only used as intended. They are never, ever only used to the benefit of the “good guys”. We don’t want censorship on AO3 for the same reason we don’t want a leftist president with unlimited power - because the people in charge today might not be the people in charge tomorrow. Because no one should be allowed that kind of authority, even people we agree with. Because humans are fallible and make mistakes and make bad choices, and we have no choice but to let them, but we sure as hell can prevent them from doing too much damage.

Writing down a rape fantasy that someone is already fucking having because they are among the most common sexual fantasies on the fucking planet does not cause tangible harm. Destroying someone’s creative outlet? Tangible fucking harm.

These people want to take away the only bastion against the wider world that fandom has, because a small percentage of it contains upsetting, triggering ideas. Not calls for action, not instruction manuals, not advocations - just ideas, put together to make stories. The site HAS self-censoring mechanisms, that's one of the reasons for its existence, but the ability to actively avoid the content they don’t want to see isn’t enough for them. That scares me, and it should scare you, too. Because once they decide you’re “problematic”, you’re next.

Because they are advocating for authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is not your friend.

[onlyfroaskingcmcqusetions1]

I don't know why, but I'm excited as hell to go to Chuck-E-Cheese tomorrow. A bit of context here I'm on the autism spectrum, and one of my favorite things currently / special interest currently is Chuck-E-Cheese I've always enjoyed Chuck-E-Cheese with a ID I don't know why, but I'm excited as hell to go to Chuck E Cheese tomorrow. Just for a bit of context here I'm on the autism inspection, and one of my favorite things currently / special interests currently is Chuck Keith I've always enjoyed Chuck E Cheese as a kid and when I was younger I said I'm having my 16th birthday party there Well that never happened, it was I thought it was because Mommy was afraid of society judging me, and also I figured it was because well she was afraid that the others might laugh at me if I tried to invite some people and to a degree because I'm well aware of the whole thing of my mom being the mother of my disability is worried about my future and worried about what other people think of me and wants me to do good and I'll do what you need to be able to bid for it and blah blah blah so I could understand that wanting me to not do stuff like that's probably just decided that if you do weird things you have to be blessed and bullied because weird is bad so I know anyone who thinks that's basically Immortal and I don't do Mortal and if you don't know who or what muscle is then T go home do your research and said otherwise we can't be friends LOL. It decides he's basically one big giant and we've decided that you have to be normal in newborn the dope thing want you turn 16 and if you still like Chucky by the time you're a teenager that you're weird potentially crazy and mentally unstable and I find that very offencive hell, there's no reason in adults can't like Chuck-E-Cheese help there's even an entire floor room which I'm a member of covestro Pizza Zone that is dedicated to us Panda trophy Keys ShowBiz Pizza Pizza Time theater and before you go saying what the hell are those I actually have a post that I'm going postal in detail exactly what they are. So, on to the actual reason I was never able to help the police data wanted and on the website it says there's a four-person minimum to have a birthday party with two no shoes allowed so, basically because of my autism coma I had no friends I was that guy in my mom most likely didn't want me to face the reality of because you're autistic and I'm not saying that some people can't have friends I'm just saying Society has decided those are bosses are going allowed to have friends really because it's if we try to make friends and neurotypical people with the mess with us and if they do much with it it's usually because the battery in a pond for somebody before not pleasant for they're trying to make themselves look good I've been in that position as well or their food again and in that position as well you probably was trying to he probably send it then as you're too old for Chuck-E-Cheese no but in reality I'm doing my research for my own plans to have my own personal Chuck-E-Cheese birthday party me myself and I and yes I was more than willing to let the person gets in the Chuck-E-Cheese Chuck-E-Cheese gift for one person I know they can do that but that's besides the point. So, I realized she should be alone right I don't have any friends and she probably realized oh, she doesn't have any friends I don't want her to feel bad when we try to book it can't get for people with it I really couldn't have gotten four people together at the time because I really miss having you but maybe one friend during that time it's technically to was one of them with my big sister so I'm not going to count and no I don't have any siblings I'm talking Big Brothers Big Sisters. So, basically I wanted to talk about something Dickies if you pick snap don't shame someone for enjoying things I couldn't cheese as an adult not if you're doing it because you stupid Society affected Society doesn't matter don't listen to don't follow don't