#megansthoughts

[ghostlyqueensoul]

I’m not the only one who stays up all night and binge watches Law & Order: SVU. This show is amazing 😫

[meganmaherstoryart]

I have a second art page now! ^_^

It's here! It's named after the town where my pumpkin characters live. ^_^

I'm still going to be posting all of the Christmas cards/other presents for friends and family or any art that's more personal to this art page, but all new art of my original characters and new fanart I do will be posted over there. There's already 2 new original pieces and 1 new fanart piece! :D I've always been annoyed that my art tumblr and art twitter don't have the same username (since my art tumblr name was too long for twitter -_- ) but I've heard that changing your username here can mess up the links of your old posts. Also my art twitter ended up being more of a general account with fandom squeeing etc than just an art blog. ^^; So I decided to start fresh with both and now they'll both be 100% my art posts, have the same username, and I can still have the perfectly tagged archive of everything I posted to this page in the past! ^_^

[witchthought]

I never thought I’d be this stupid to believe that I could ever be enough.

[bohemian-pearl-blog]

I’m not kidding I will learn Korean so I can understand every beautiful word that IU sings

[megstermckinley-blog]

nighttime > daytime

[meganmaherstoryart]

Happy Autism Acceptance Month! :D This is a very quick doodle of my autistic character Chiaki with the autism symbol of rainbow infinity! I’m currently working on her story because I feel it’s important for there to be more books about autism written by autistic people, such as myself, to show that autism has a ton of wonderful things about it! My favorite aspects are how it gives me special interests which are so much fun to squee about with others and learn more about and immerse myself in, and how it gives me a superpower of sorts when it comes to being able to observe little details and notice things that most people just ignore (such as the way the light makes the wings of bees shimmer as they sit on the flowers)! :D

This got long, but below is a bunch of info about autism and Autism Acceptance Month, so please read it if you have the chance! ^_^

You are probably going to see a lot of posts this month about “Autism Awareness” and “Light it up blue” and see symbols like puzzle pieces. All of these come from the hate group Autism Speaks, who is trying to drive the narrative that autism is a disease that needs to be eradicated. They spend their research money hoping they can find a way to test for it in the womb so the parents can abort the child or find a cure for it. They promote a type of therapy that tries to get autistic people to learn how to pass as “normal” by forcing them to act in a way that goes against everything that comes naturally to them. Ironically, they don’t have autistic people speaking in their organization. Everything is from the perspective of parents and siblings of autistic people, and it’s all with the narrative that dealing with an autistic person is a huge burden and that being autistic is a fate worse than death.

We in the autistic community do not like the idea of “awareness” as it has that connotation of something bad you’re trying to prevent from happening, such as “breast cancer awareness” and “sexual assault awareness.” Their color is blue because of the false notion autism is more prevalent in boys (it’s not, it’s simply that the autism stereotype is how it presents in young boys so thus they get tested as kids while girls like me often don’t get tested and diagnosed until we’re adults). Their symbol is a puzzle piece, which has a connotation that we don’t fit in. Please don’t support these things or anything from Autism Speaks. Instead, please support groups like ASAN (the Autistic Self Advocacy Network) and our April event of AutismAcceptance and RedInstead. If you see any autism awareness or light it up blue things in your workplace or schools, please be an ally and ask them to change it to Autism Acceptance.

We prefer Autism Acceptance because we just want to be accepted for who we are! Autism isn’t something separate from us, it IS who we are. We have RedInstead because red is the opposite of blue. But I like that choice because it’s also a color associated with being passionate, something most autistics are if you get them talking about their special interest. And our symbol is the rainbow infinity to represent neurodiversity in general and the diversity of autistic people. Autism presents itself differently in girls and boys, in different age groups, and in different individuals. It’s like how all ice cream has that base of being ice cream, but it comes in lots of different flavors. We all have the base of autistic traits, but how those traits present themselves can vary from autistic person to autistic person.

Which brings me to how the majority of autistic people prefer identity-first language (autistic people) instead of person-first language (people with autism). Person-first language separates the person from whatever the bad thing is in the sentence, such as, “person experiencing homelessness” or “person with cancer.” This means that whatever you’re separating IS bad and you’re trying to show that it’s something “other” than who they are and they’re dealing with or have. It is very important to use that in those cases. But with autism, we don’t see it as a bad thing in of itself. We don’t see it as separate from who we are. It IS who we are. It’s like how you don’t say “person whose job is making art” you say “artist” or you don’t say “person who experiences gay attraction” you say “gay person” or you don’t say “person who has children” you say “parent” Those are all aspects of who you are, and for us autistics, being autistic is as much being a part of who we are as those things.

Now, I’m not trying to invalidate the struggles that autistic people face. We do have a ton of those, but they are all very much society-based for whether or not they’re a problem. For instance, eye contact is painful and extremely difficult for most autistic people. In a society like America where if you’re not making eye contact constantly while in a conversation, it’s considered rude and makes people think you’re not paying attention to them or their expressions. It makes in-person conversations difficult for me if I have to actively think about making eye contact, because that takes so much effort that I end up not being able to pay attention to what the people are saying. But in a society like Japan, making constant eye contact is what is considered rude, so it’s not an issue. It’s also not an issue when I’m with friends who know that I am reading their hand expressions instead of their facial expressions and allow me to not make eye contact, or in situations where it’s normal to not be making eye contact, like talking with someone who is driving a car and I’m in the passenger seat, or taking a walk side-by-side so we’re not facing each other.

And that is why we want Autism Acceptance. Please accept us as we are. We do things differently, we think differently. It’s very much like being left or right-handed. In the past, left-handed people were forced to write with their right hands (myself included in kindergarten until my mom found out my teacher was making me do that and she demanded the teacher allow me to use my left-hand as I’d been very obviously left-handed since I was a baby). But now it’s perfectly acceptable for people to write with the hand their brain is wired to do. Autistic brains are wired differently, and we just want to be able to live our lives in the way that our brains are wired to do.

Thank you to all of my friends out there who do love and accept me just as I am! ^_^ I’ve very grateful for you! ^_^ <3

[meganmaherstoryart]

Icon change

Since I often have that moment of “who are you?!” when people change their icon after having the same one for years, I figured I should make a note just in case any of you are the same. So this was my old one: 

And now it’s my character Elliot so that way all of my art social media pages have the same profile picture! :D 

[meganmaherstoryart]

So I’m not leaving tumblr because I genuinely love this place—it has the best layout for an art blog, the best tagging system for organization, and the best fandom communities. But since I just found out that 1 of my Touyuki pics got incorrectly flagged (they already processed the appeal and agree it’s an innocent picture, so it’s all good now), I figure it’s a good idea to let all of you know where else to find me. As long as I still have my blog here, it will be where I post things first and most regularly, but I’ll try to be better about updating those other sites.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/meganmaherart

Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/chibisunnie

Official Portfolio: https://meganmaherstoryart.carbonmade.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganmaherstoryart/  (This one is empty right now because I discovered there’s no way to post pictures from a computer and all my art is on my computer. >_< So once I find a way to get my art from my computer to my phone, I’ll start adding content. It might be a matter of opening my art tumblr on my phone & downloading all my pictures or uploading things to google drive and downloading them. But I don’t have time for that until classes are over. @_@).

A03: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSunnie

[witchthought]

Sleeping to me is more important than any guy will ever be, Sleep is peaceful and relaxing. Men they just aren't

[witchthought]

I definitely don’t have time for guys that disrespect me daily, what makes you think you’re better than me? I’m one of a kind. I AM NOT THE ONE TO BE DISRESPECTED

[witchthought]

The heart wants what the heart wants, but sometimes you shouldn’t follow your heart. You should listen to your brain instead. Sometimes you land yourself in bad situations because you’ve followed your heart one too many times. Use your head.

[witchthought]

Will I ever be enough? Is my life just a continuous lie that I cannot escape.

[bohemian-pearl-blog]

Oml I just registered for a TEFL course which means I could teach abroad this year...I can’t believe I did it. I freaking bit the bullet. Now to see if I have the guts to follow through.

[witchthought]

I'm the best at giving advice but when it comes to trying to listen to my own advice I just don't. It's a curse

[bohemian-pearl-blog]

Confession: sometimes I stay in my head for so long I forget the real world exists. Then, slowly at first, I remember where I am, who my family and friends are, what I do, what I have done, and the unknown future. Faster and faster it all comes back and until reality hits me in the stomach. And I wish I could have stayed.

[bohemian-pearl-blog]

Trying for things is so scary y’all. But when an opportunity presents itself and you have basically nothing to lose isn’t it worse to not try at all??