#too disabled and autistic to actively be a person forever

[selamat-linting]

so, last time i left off on homestuck, i was introduced with the cherubs, and meenah peixes' bizarre (afterlife) adventure. as always, some thoughts :

-i kinda feel bad for dirk lol. out of all the group, he was the one caliborn felt is the most tolerable to talk to. and worst of all, he kinda let him play his shitty games. eugh, if that was me, i'd just scoff at caliborn's threats on killing his sister and accidentally kickstarted the apocalypse too early since my ignorance pissed him off. to be fair, the porn drawing game feels like a pretty lackcluster attempt at trolling. its so cute how dirk draw himself kissing his crush.

-poor calliope though. last time i saw her she's very much a ghost, maybe stuck around the furthest ring along with the other very dead ghosts, but is somehow able to subtly influence things like guide caliborn into doing his quest from the viewport, and allegedly maybe stop meenah and vriska from having their duel and waking up john. this is only a maybe though, im not very convinced at my perception of events here.

-speaking of calliope and caliborn, this is where things started getting meta right? homestuck has always have a bit of metafiction elements to it, and a lot of its themes seems to be deconstructing and examining popular culture. act 6 is where things started getting off the rails, i mean, where references to internet subcultures gets more blatant, more up to date with the current time it was made (direct meme references instead of making its own inner jokes derived from irl shit like sbahj), and started to put a mirror on homestuck since it has grown into a notorious major fandom now. it makes sense that hussie would start writing about homestuck instead writing about the internet in general. there is no way act 6 can be something else. and it has its negatives just as much as it has its positives

-first of all, meme references in media has always been hard to do right. remember that burger ad fiasco? some of the jokes on act 6 doesnt land as well as in act 5 and 4

-wait shit i went off the rails. i want to talk about caliope and caliborn first. caliope is a hypothetical fan of hs meanwhile caliborn is a hater right? he was also a representation of misogyny which fits with the times. a lot of cringe culture ppl in the 2010s, at least the loudest ones, tend to be misogynists. i've seen the case over and over again. people who said they hate the fandom when actually they just hate to see teen girls having fun. they also tend to be ableists esp their attitude around bullying and autistic ppl but hussie is also an ableist too, so even though he was the one being bullied by cringe culture people online and benefitted from autistic kids making fanworks, he made caliborn to be the guy with a learning disability. hilarious bitch ig.

-but other than that, caliope's insult to caliborn implies that the murder he did was detrimental to his growth as person. not just metaphorically, but literally. im not so up to date with cherub lore and alien biology, but killing your headmate before their natural death and integration Sounds Bad. and based on calliope's word alone, it might even make caliborn perpetually stunted in cherub equivalent of puberty forever, unable to reach maturity. poor dude. but, is actually a pretty good commentary on toxic masculinity preventing one's full growth as a person because he can't allow himself to gain emotional maturity and do so called female activities.

-okay, moving on from the cherubs. the dancestors. personally, i like their designs, i spesifically love meenah, porrim, and aranea. meenah is scratching the vriska itch but with a different flavor. and i guess kankri, despite his massive annoying factor was nice too. i know a kid who actually act like him. the kid in my town went drunk with his friends and when his friends started being sad about his ex, the kid called him a sexist pig. a few weeks later i got news that this same kid persistently try get girls into having sex with him. educating him was a bitch and a half yknow and im not even that sad the kid decides to withdraw from organizing for now. but it is a bit hopeful to see that a kid like kankri, in another timeline, if given the chance to grow up and learn would be a terrific leader. maybe a few years later the kid in my town would change too?

-but other than that its... man how do i say this. okay, its bad. a lot of the characters are just there just for the sake of having to be there. hussie, you dont have to complete all 12 of the dancestors its okay. youre just wasting more energy animating stuff that you obviously dislike by now. like idc what they says, but the 12 dancestors wasnt even a good mirror of tumblr subcultures. its just there as a one off gag instead of something they wants to delve into later on. the jokes wasnt even that funny like, i've spent two years on reddit making fun of softboy nice guys and gamer gurls the joke is old at this point. and hussie seems to delve deeper into being an ableist asshole the more people criticize them. its pathetic to make a strawman character of your haters and criticizers. honestly, caliborn would have been a better character if its just a stand in for toxic masculinity instead of a homestuck hater. the story is too bloated at this point. just give it a rest.

-also, act 6 weakness is that most of the story elements would fly over someone who never know the heydays of 2012-2015 tumblr. okay, this applies to homestuck as a whole honestly. like its about the internet and american 90s nostalgia. only a terminally online person would fully appreciate it. but dear god the mental illnes you'll get if youre one of lucky demographics to understand... hussie might have hit and miss on some things, but when they're right theyre right. i do think there are merits on making things that will never have mass appeal.

-okay, now thats out of my system im gonna say that from now on, im not gonna take homestuck as seriously as i did yesterday. i can see this is the point where things started to fall apart. bloated character sets, too many authorial self inserts, plot is becoming overly convoluted, the social commentary are becoming incoherent. hussie can make an entire page about dirk explaining the downfall of western civilization using historical materialism to jake but this will always be the webcomic where the 'scariest' troll is a rapper who made vodka pie, slept in a bed of honks, and taped wings on his godtier cosplay.

-okay this is getting too long. on to facking part 2 of my post!!!!

[evelhak]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance 2023

April 4

Were/are you in special education? Regular school? Home schooled? A private school? Did it change over time? Did/do you like it?

I was in regular school, and now I can finally admit that it was highly traumatizing for me. I felt like I was a "borderline case" who should have just as well been in special education than regular class, despite not having a diagnosis and not knowing I was autistic back then. I'm sure partially that happened because I was "threatened" with special education by someone, as if it was something shameful. Because I was "normal" so I should have acted "normal". But I think it was also because I related to the kids in special education more than I related to my classmates. In after school care in elementary school I always played with kids from special ed. The only friends I felt completely safe with as a small child were those kids. I had less significant misunderstandings with a friend with an intellectual disability and a speech impairment than I had with my classmates. But I never had enough time to spend with those friends for us to become really close, because I was only in the after school care for a year-ish and there were very few opportunities after that, because everything was done with your own class, and kids in special education were in a different building so I couldn't hang out with them between classes either.

I don't have intellectual disability, I always had a spiky skill profile but there wasn't any subject I couldn't pass on my own. I didn't really struggle with school work too much, but I for sure struggled socially. I was bullied and ostrasized by my classmates for a decade, through four different schools, from kindergarten to the end of middle school, which I felt highly ashamed about and did my best to hide until adulthood. I did sometimes try to tell someone but I never called it "bullying", or I downplayed its impact on me, or I said things like "oh but everyone gets bullied". Both because of the shame and because no adult saw it or was able to do anything about it, or cared enough to try, anyway. I felt nothing could be done about it anyway, because I was the reason I was being bullied. I didn't so much think it was "my fault" in a moral sense as I just logically figured out the reason I'm a target must be something in me, because I was still bullied in different schools and different cities, the only common thing in those situations was me, so certainly I had to be the reason.

I had one friend in elementary school who I feel forever indebted to, because she didn't care about what the rest of the class thought about me. She was just so cool and strong and her own person. Everyone wanted to be her friend, but she had decided she liked me so much that even when the other "cool" girls came to tell her how much they wanted to be with her, as long as she wouldn't hang out with me, she told them she would rather be with me than be with them without me. I still think about her strength today with teary eyes. She willingly ostrasized herself from everyone else because of me, and even now it doesn't fit into my head that someone could have cared about me so much. She saved me, without her my only friends would have been the class's stick insects. (They were good friends though.) Without her I probably wouldn't have had the strength to even try to make new friends when I suddenly had to move away.

I had friends in my other schools but none that didn't eventually end up leaving me for reasons I never got to hear. Of course, as is common with autistic people I was also a magnet for manipulative and abusive people, so I got my share of that. Thinking back to it, it seems baffling to me that I never skipped school, it was so much more terrible than I ever would have admitted back then. I think I had one saving key aspect again: my folk dance group. Because it was a really healthy environment centered around a predictable activity, and that's how I was able to make and keep friends there for a much longer time than in the class which was an unstructured social environment and that was brutal to me. I was either completely invisible or I was picked on: who wouldn't choose to be invisible then? I remember it still came as a shock to me when we gathered to watch pictures our teacher had taken of the class in different events and I was barely in any of them.

Anyway, end of middle school was such a shit show that I knew something had to change. That's when I basically learned to mask over the summer and made a real "high school debut". In middle school I still hadn't made much effort to hide my weirdness but in high school I made all the effort. I made sure to enter the new school like a different person. I started wearing makeup, my clothes were nondescript but stylish enough. My role model was Rory Gilmore from the Gilmore Girls because she was loved for being a nerdy little bookworm, because she was cute and girly and weird in an acceptable way. I did master that in high school enough, but the price I paid was of course high... Doing that performance meant I had no close friends for the first year, only aquintances. Sure, no one hated me, which was the goal, but also I didn't reveal anything real about myself to anyone, so how could I have real friends? Eventually I did get real friends through another group activity: drama and art classes. (Most of those friends were probably not neurotypical, so we clicked.) But I still suffered the consequences from masking so much that I had no energy to hang out with anyone after school.

I was so burned out from high school for multiple reasons that I became pretty much a hermit in the beginning of university, but that's beyond the scope of this post, I think.

I think the point of my reflection here is that not only was being in regular school traumatizing for me because allistic students didn't understand autism and bullies saw it as the perfect opportunity to target someone, being in a regular class also routinely prevented me from connecting with neurodivergent students whom it would have benefited my mental health to hang out with. I was trapped in regular class, I had no way out of the environment that was traumatizing for me but no one would notice I was in pain, and no one would believe it even if I tried to tell. My classmates called me "the stone" and I suspect it was at least partially because I didn't react to their bullying in a visible way. And I think all this gets at the the key experience of undiagnosed people, people with invisible disabilities: you cannot access what you need, because people don't have you in the right context.

[rewcana]

it's the 2 yr anniversary of me getting hit with the corner of a 43lb box containing an AC unit. it scraped against my back over my left shoulder blade. i am currently disabled by that injury, 2 years later. it's a different form of that injury but it is a result of it. i've not gotten any medical treatment because it's a work injury and my employer won't take responsibility for it. im in the middle of a months long lawsuit trying to get compensation and treatment. ive been disabled for 9 months. i healed okay from the initial injury but during heavy lifting activities or anything involving my shoulder it would aggravate the injury. then i got another heavy lifting job and the injury was severely aggravated again after not bothering me for months. i decided to go through workers comp and the dr told me to work and continuing to work through immense pain (i informed the dr how severe the pain was) aggravated the injury SO MUCH that it has stayed with me this long. previous aggravations of the injury would heal within a week but because i was forced to work because my doctor restrictions held more weight than my present experience, now i have a severe physical disability and chronic pain.

i have relived the injury so many times, re-experiencing the physical trauma. and the emotional trauma from having to justify and defend my pain to my managers, health care professionals, fucking insurance agents. my insurance bitch wouldn't listen to me when i wanted to go back to the doctors so they could change my work restrictions because lifting 15 lbs was incredibly painful for me, i could barely move my arm without severe throbbing pain. she wouldn't shut up about the process and only listened when i was having a full on melt down in my car outside of the clinic. fully sobbing and screaming in my car because no one is taking my pain seriously. she finally approved it and insisted that it "wouldn't matter" bc all she cares about is the case and if the company will be held liable. but getting more severe work restrictions saved me from extreme pain.

then i had another full on sobbing melt down in front of my supervisor and manager which is an autistic person's worst nightmare. this one was because i was put into work that i was pressured into agreeing to that technically didn't fit into my dr restrictions and i was in severe pain still. i told my supervisor that my injury was really painful today so i would be icing it. he said that was fine and that i could do so for as long as i need. i did that and then he confronted me and said i was doing so for too long. i rushed away and burst into tears and sobbed in the bathroom because my pain was so extreme and i was so frustrated with people not being clear and feeling like no one was considering my pain. masking pain is such a traumatic and prevelant narrative in my autistic ass life. but this insane physical pain was just too difficult and i felt so weak and pathetic and i was sobbing for like over an hour while trying to talk through this with my manager and the supervisor. the supervisor was taking it personally but i just keep saying that it's because i'm in so much pain. my manager was actually quite sweet and understanding about it because she had been through an incredibly painful injury as well.

pain is really like... if you haven't experienced it to a certain degree, it's just conceptual to you. you really can't understand it unless you've felt its horror.

anyway being autistic and injured in a workplace sucks. it also fucking sucks being disabled with a special sting that it's a work injury that is legally complicated so the lawsuit is taking forever and who knows if i'll ever see the end of it. i really hope i will. these are free lawyers so they kinda don't care but they do but it takes time i guess. gods. i just fucking hate capitalism so goddamn much.

i regret so hard not suing when i first was injured but my social anxiety and avoidance behavior kept me from it. if i had known how much it would have fucked me over in the long run i would have. not to mention the mountains of trauma i went through at that workplace. gods no wonder i've been unemployed for so long (well besides the disability that makes most work i qualify for impossible) i have so much goddamn work trauma. fuck.

i miss the good ole days of dining hall work. i didnt get paid much and didnt really talk to anyone but at least i wasn't experiencing the horrors.

on a brighter note the severity of the pain and disability is much less. i can cook, clean, carry some things, shower, get dressed, use the toilet, etc. with minor pain. i still feel severe pains after periods of lots of activity (lots of cleaning, moving around, cooking, driving, etc) and i can't carry heavy things with my left arm or extend it far for long. there is lots i can't do but i hope to do. maybe on the 3rd anniversary of the injury, i will have justice. i will be actively getting treatment. i hope this will be true. im glad that at least i finally did sue. i'm taking steps tho the journey is slow due to extreme avoidant behaviors (due to extreme burnout). day by day by day by day.

[idkhowtosocialize]

right so this is a LONG vent about some autistic experiences I have in the work place and more (assuming this post isn't going to reach anyone)

I've recently been diagnosed with autism with a possibility for adhd and I have a job that I hate

I always knew the types of jobs I can take on are limited, anything to do with costumer service or even any human interaction at all is out of the question, and anything too physical or stressful is a no go so I had the impression a simple office job should be perfect, right?

well, I was wrong

apparently, an office environment is too lively and demanding for me there are people talking in the background all the time and walking around behind me and I just want to focus on my stuff and it's driving my insannneeee I just feel like I'm being punished and tortured every day

idk what hurts more, the noise everyone is making or how loud the music I'm listening to to block their noise is every noise or movement around me is like I'm being actively hit with something

there used to be times when we were less people and the office was a lot quieter, and I still hated every second of it !!! because being around people all the time is HELL, I can't stim, I can't move, I can't do anything but stare at the screen and make it look like I'm working

EVEN WHEN I'M ALONE I FEEL CONSTANTLY UNCOMFORTABLE this environment just doesn't feel safe for me, I feel like an animal in a cage, constantly being watched and expected to behave

not to mention how DRAINING this is, i spend almost all of my free time at home being checked out and shut down just trying to recover

i feel so useless and broken, usually I don't really mind the things I can't do because I don't want to do them, but this is a thing I wanted to do, and that is important and it feels like a failure of me as a person me being recognized as autistic is pretty recent, so I still put myself to a standard of an average neurotypical, and it's hard to recognize my struggles as a result of a disability and not as a personal shortcoming

like what does it even mean to be disabled? like is it true that as long as I'm able to complete what's expected of me I'm not disabled ? it feels like as long as I can keep pushing through I need to keep pushing through, even if I do the bare minimum

and where is the line between can and can't? who is the one to decide it? can it be a conscious decision of the brain? is it an instinct ? is it the point when your body is failing and try as you might you can't control it any longer ?

I want to believe the limit needs to be set before you actually harm yourself, but growing up with an invisible and undiagnosed disability it feels like me hurting isn't a good enough reason (whether it's emotionally, mentally or physically) but then how am I supposed to know the difference between hurt enough and not hurt enough, because both of these hurt!! how am i supposed to know when to listen and when to ignore my body ??

am I fully just subjected to others opinions and how much can I make them pity me?

I am forever trapped between my own struggles and the worlds expectations and I really can't take it

[actualsunflower]

I have a huge life update to share rn--- My top surgery consultation is scheduled for July 5th!!!! I’M SO EXCITEDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!! I’ve also been vaccinated!! :D ANNNDDD MY LEGAL NAME AND SEX HAVE BEEN CHANGEDD!!!!! :DDDD kind of a lot has happened since I’ve been actually active around here But now I guess is the much harder part, my official surgery date will be set at the consultation, but there’s a required $1,000 fee to set the official date for my surgery. The $1,000 covers a portion of the surgery as well, and the base price for the surgery is $8,500. I’ll get the exact price on July 5th, but that’s their base rate. I need to earn or raise at least $1,000 of the total cost before July 5th to secure my surgery date!! I’m going to take commissions when I can, I have 1 almost entirely complete right now and then I can take on more! I’m gonna have a more detailed explanation of everything under the cut so this isnt super super long so pls read under there if you want all the deets Pls consider commissioning me or donating so I can get top surgery!! read more for more info and me being sappy abt my emotions--

I’ve waited so long for this and I’m fricken excited, it’s the last step in transitioning for me! It really means everything for me, I feel like I’ve been waiting forever and I can’t believe it’s finally happening !?!!! I am forever in everyones debt here and everywhere because I never wouldve even been able to start hrt if it wasn’t for the help here. I’m just so. Overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude I cant even tell how many times Ive cried and just felt like... actual gender euphoria since starting t..

So abt the appointment, I’m getting surgery with Dr. Javad Sajan, and I’m getting button hole double incision. Im serious his before and after pictures make me so emotional I am so happy and emotional for those people and I cannot wait to feel that kind of happiness and relief. But a big problem about this for me, is that he is in Seattle, and I live in southern Oregon. I can’t drive, so I have to rely on someone else, or take the train from a nearby city (Eugene). My consultation is over skype (which is amazing and a huge relief), but my pre-op appointment is in person, and of course so is the actual surgery. We’re planning on taking the train from Eugene because it seems to be the most reliable way to get there and back each time. Aside from my surgery, I’ve got to cover the price of the trip there and back (twice, once there and back for pre-op, once there and back post op,) and the price of a place to stay during the pre-op appointment. Right now my goal cost wise, is just the booking and base appointment price ($8,500, that’s including the $1,000 appointment setting deposit, which is just a part of the surgery cost and the base covers everything, surgery, the stay at the hospital, nips, anesthesia, everything). The full price is due at the pre-op appointment, and that’s the final bill. My insurance doesn’t cover anything because it’s out of state and county, and because its informed consent model. (which Im choosing because Id have to battle insurance for 2 years minimum if I was getting the surgery in Oregon, but I am very set on my surgeon after considering everything and calling many offices and looking through many subreddits and talking to ppl who’ve gotten it here and there) A lot of this information is on their site as well. As soon as I have my consultation, I will be right here to update everything and set the exact price, which I’ll also be including the price of transportation and staying there. As for paying, I’ve been applying to so many jobs, and even when I get interviews I never hear back from them. People keep telling me to stop admitting I’m disabled but I just can’t do that. Lying about being disabled doesnt make me abled and they don’t get that. I’m still trying though, and I am not going to stop trying until I get a job. But until then commissions and donations are my only source of income. I’ve been struggling getting help psychologically, because I have schizophrenia, and because I was diagnosed with adhd as a child, but I think I’m actually autistic rather than having adhd, and it’s been really hard trying to get diagnosed because I keep getting pushed off or told I cant have autism because I have paranoid schizophrenia or because its “just adhd”, but the medications are just making everything worse, and Ive tried more than one already. My medications for schizophrenia have started not working right, and when my schizophrenia meds get under control, it makes my adhd (?) significantly worse. Genuinely, I really dont know what’s happening. I really dont know whats going on with me right now and it’s hard and confusing and I keep swinging back and forth and it’s making everything deteriorate so fast I cant keep up with it. It seriously effects my ability to do anything at all, even art, and its been like this for the last 6 months. I am trying though, still trying to work, still trying to get a job, still trying to get a real diagnosis and help and Im not going to stop any of that. But I think getting top surgery as soon as possible is going to help me too, because dysphoria has just gotten so much worse focusing on my chest since t has started helping me pass and look so much more masculine. It’s like all my attention went from everything DIRECTLY to my chest and its almost unbearable. Even now since my sex has been legally changed I keep having the horrible thoughts of ‘why, why I am a man Im not supposed to be this way’ and shit idk. I’m getting too serious right now I have an appointment with the dmv to get a new updated driver’s permit with my name and fixed legal sex, and when I do that I can set up a bank account (I cant yet bcs I dont have a valid id/ id at all because I actually lost the other one and have been carrying around that paper one you’re supposed to destroy that is literally from 2016) and when I do, I’m going to set up a proper gofundme for my surgery and the travel expenses, but for now all I have is my paypal and online banking savings account. I’ll get that up asap once I have my id, though (Ive already been to the bank with my notarized judge passed papers and they wont take those yeah I know it’s stupid its like the same thing) But uhhh yeah! Thank you for reading this far if you did lol and considering helping me bcs my god, it literally means everything to me. pls share hehe

[that-bitttch]

Disability representation in media and fandom- Part 1

Hi all, Beanie here! Today I am going to talk about my experiences with disability and representation.

So if you are unaware, I am an 18 year old, partially deaf/HOH, autistic, queer woman with mental illnesses. My experience in life has not been all that great, but today i am going to focus on the HOH and autistic side of things.

Growing up was hard for me. It still is and i have so much more support than i did then. I did not become aware of my hearing loss until i was already in high school, in year seven (british high school), and i received my hearing aids shortly afterwards. It honestly changed my life.

Before I knew, i was tormented. I was the butt of jokes, for many reasons, only i did not understand those reasons until much later. My hair, my clothes, my weight, my face, my actions. I could not hear what was going on around me, how my peers would act, and i spent most of my childhood following aroumd my older sister and being bullied. I couldnt 'mask' as a lot of autistic people do, simply because i did not know what was happening, so i never had a chance to fit in, and by the time i did it was too late. I was secure in my position of weird, geeky snitch.

After i found out, i slowly gained confidence, a personality of my own. I stood up to the assholes pushing me around and evemtually did not take their shit. For the first time in my life, i made friends. Those friends may not have stayed forever, but they were there. And it was amazing. But there were still downsides. I could now hear the words being thrown at me, the slurs, the mimicry of my mispronunciation.

I found Hawkeye when I was 13. I had already watched the avengers films that were out at the time, and i thought he was awesome. Then i was browsing social media, and i remember reading a post explaining how canonly Clint Barton aka Hawkeye is deaf, and wears hearing aids. It was honestly a defining moment of my life. I remember standing, and running to show my sister. There was a superhero, that was like me! People could actively go and make good in the world and be famous! Someone purposefully created such an amazing character like that! I admit i cried, a lot. Ever since then, Hawkeye has been my favourite superhero.

That representation changed my life. No joke. I realised that there were things that i could do that i thought i would never be able to do purely because i am different. And i know it means a lot to so many other people too.

I will continue with more on representation in Part 3, but I want to go into more detail on the autism side of things as well and link my points together. Thank you for taking the time to read this!

[creacherkeeper]

okay re: disability in pyre because im somehow not the only person interested in this 

first off disclaimer that obviously people get different dialogue in their games so im coming from what i got in mine about disabled!reader which was honestly NOT MUCH but some people may have gotten more that i dont know about. if you have more info about stuff, please respond! i’d love to hear it. or honestly just thoughts in general like im so up for a convo about this 

but its just so fascinating to me having a game that is built around physical competitions - sports for an easier term - where the basic concept is that this sport is how individual worth is determined and the status of citizen is restored 

and that game having an explicitly disabled protagonist who is unable to participate physically in those sports 

i’d like to clarify up front that i don’t think this is done badly in the game at all. my game didn’t talk about it much but i think this explanation in universe for why your PC doesnt play makes sense. i just want to chew on what this means. super ramble under the cut  

its explored multiple times how “right” the scribes actually are. obviously theyre held in high esteem, but were the rites really the correct or best way to go about things? are they a true test of worth or do they cause needless suffering and competition? is a workable option built in a corrupt system worth anything in the end? i think everything about the scribes & the rites is really interesting because its heavily coded as religion whereas it works more as a legal system. this is less about sin and more about societal exoneration. which brings us to the commonwealth 

we know the reader was exiled for being literate and is ALSO disabled. i think there’s a line in there that the disability is not new, which means being disabled is not in itself illegal in the commonwealth. which like. given everything that IS ILLEGAL thats like. honestly kind of surprising? even moontouched girl, who is heavily coded as autistic/ND, was exiled because no one claimed responsibility for her (i did not actually get her backstory in game though so i might be missing something there, again please let me know). there’s nothing i got in the game that says disability is really seen as a negative inherently. which makes it VERY STRANGE that the rites, the one way to regain freedom, is a test of physical ability 

we know from volfred (and possibly brighton too) that readers arent banned from participating in the rites. from what i got of volfred, it seems he filled both reader & participant roles at once. which means that truly the only thing stopping the player character from participating, and ultimately winning their freedom (from what we know up until the end) is that they are physically disabled. so what does that say about worth & value in the downside? the rites are how one is judged as worthy of freedom - does that therefore mean that those unable to play are not worthy of even being judged? does that mean that their worth is a complete nonfactor? or that they “deserve” to be in the downside without question? 

its really interesting that the rites weren’t introduced by the commonwealth themselves, the people who would be receiving those exiles BACK. if it was, i would be much more likely to say “this is their way of limiting the number & influence of disabled citizens”. but it wasn’t ... they were formed by the scribes, exiles themselves, in the downside. they were raised in a corrupt system, but ultimately they sought to reform it. so why then, in their process, would they make it MORE limiting? we see characters pushing themselves to compete way past the point where they should probably stop (you’ll live forever in my heart old dog man) and even that competing can cause illness. it’s obviously a strain on the body. it’s interesting too that the downside itself changes people physically - common folk turned into demons are bigger and stronger than they were before, but also much slower. im sure for just as many folk turned demons, who found themselves more powerful from their time in the downside, there were even more who found themselves disabled because of it. why did the scribes feel those people were not worth getting back? 

the one physically disabled character (from how i remember, please correct me if theres more!) that we see participating in the rites at all is sandra. obviously she’s not in the real things, but she does play & is good at it. however, sanda is a highly trained operative who received a lot of training even after she was blinded. so that does introduce the whole aspect of exceptionalism. physically disabled people are able to compete, but they have to work that much harder to “””overcome their disability””” to be on the same level 

and, obviously, its a video game, so the player character does have to be the “most important” and the one making decisions. but its also interesting that, because of that, in such a narrative heavy game, the character who cant compete is also the one holding the team together. did the scribes never anticipate a possibility like this? that a person unable to play could still be so important and influential? the very basis of the game is that people come together to form teams based on common values - did none of those values include situations of disability? or is that what the final rite is for? the 1 in 28 chance, with all the teams, that a disabled person could go free? that their team, again, would have to be the Very Best, and willing to choose the disabled member? and our player character is also A READER, one of the most vital things to have in the rites. would physically disabled people, with limited options for work and hobbies, not be more likely to turn to mental activities like learning to be literate? 

honestly this has no conclusion because its just a bunch of thoughts thrown at the page but i DID only finish this game yesterday. if anyone got more dialogue about this in their games please let me know!!! or if you just want to have a convo :0 brain is in Pyre Thoughts Only mode right now 

[blakelywintersfield]

I’m gonna rant for a moment, because I think there’s something that needs to be said on this subject.

One thing that tumblr (and other social media sites) and gotten better at is replacing self-deprecation and hopeless cynicism with self-care and self-help guides. And I’m really happy to see that; the last thing people with disabilities or neurodivergency need is to feel worse about the conditions they have, and finding ways to make their lives easier and better is fantastic. But in this, I think a lot of people have forgotten one very critical thing: Your disabilities and neurodivergency will never be “fixed” or “cured”. No therapy, medication, self-help, self-care, and adaptation in the world will ever fix your disability or neurodivergency. It will never go away.

I see this extremely harmful thought process in a lot of people who are fighting to make their lives better or easier -- in particular those with disabilities, both physical, emotional, and mental, but I’ve also seen it with people with neurodivergency, in particular people with ADHD and OCD. I won’t comment on those with autism very much because (1) I am not autistic and don’t want to speak on something I don’t experience, and (2) there has, thankfully, been a lot of progression on self-advocacy and self-acceptance for autistic folks. Obviously that doesn’t mean they don’t face ableism (they do, and a lot of it is aggressive and abusive af), but I’m mainly leaning on the first reason for this. As an allistic person I don’t want to speak over people with autism, especially since this is going to come from my own perspective.

Your disabilities are never going to go away. They will forever be with you. They won’t just become unnoticeable or disappear one day. Even with the perfect medication, therapy, and coping skills, you will always have that disability. If you have schizophrenia, you will always risk having a day where you fall into psychosis. If you have depression, there will always be a possibility you’ll fall into a depressive bout. If you have anxiety, there will be days that everything will be too overwhelming. If you have bipolar, you still have times of emotional instability. If you have arthritis, there will still be days you’ll feel tired and fatigued. If you have ADHD, there will still be times you won’t be able to focus on the world around you. No disorder will go symptom free if you have it forever. The frequency and severity may be controlled, but it will never be gone.

This is extremely important to understand and accept. It’s not a pessimistic view. It’s a realistic one. And it’s okay! That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to get help, because even with the points where the medicine and therapy doesn’t work 100%, it still makes life easier and better. I could be bedridden and unable to feel my limbs thanks to RA, but my medication helps (not very much at this point as the fatigue is extreme and I’ve been losing feeling in my hands again, but that’s beside the point). I could be at the point I was 10 years ago and actively wishing not to wake up the next morning, but my antidepressants help. I might not be happy and awake all day, but I’m still in a better place than I was 10 years ago, or 5 years, or even 6 months ago. Medications and therapy are fucking amazing and help a lot. But they will not “cure” any of this.

It’s called chronic or life-long for a reason. And both people with these conditions and people without need to understand this, to be a better ally to those with disabilities and neurodivergency. If your friend with a physical disability has a period where they can’t move as easily, or have more pain, or are more fatigued, it’s not that they “aren’t trying” -- some times a disorder breaks through the treatment. The same goes for someone with an emotional disorder; if they seem more down than usual, it’s not that they aren’t trying to be better, sometimes those symptoms still come through. And your reaction to these breakthrough symptoms matter.

The best thing you can do for someone having breakthrough symptoms is to be supportive. Talk to them. Ask them if they’ve noticed their symptoms breaking through, and if they have, give them the opportunity to talk about their struggles. Sometimes just talking about it can really help. Offer suggestions to help if they ask for it. Be there for them. No one is purposely trying to make their lives harder; no one wants their life to be harder.

The worst thing you can do is tell them they’re not trying hard enough. It doesn’t matter how well you know someone, you never know what they’re going through down to the last detail. Especially since these conditions can be exhausting, you don’t know every single detail because they don’t always remember every single detail. The neurotypical “tough love” treatment does nothing and doesn’t actually show someone you love them; it shows them that you think their condition is a burden to you. It’s selfish, self-serving, and more abusive than not. It is not your place to determine if someone has been trying their hardest or not, regardless of your status in their life.

Both abled and disabled people need to accept that the mass majority of disability is lifelong and will never fully go away. Disabled folks will always have their disabilities present. There will never be a day a disabled person wakes up and never has to deal with their disability again. This needs to be normalized and accepted. It’s okay to have bad days, weeks, months, even years. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay if your medications stop working for a bit. If you’re trying, that’s enough. And everyone needs to understand and actively defend this. Chronic and lifelong disabilities will stay there for life (DUH) and disabled people deserve to be treated kindly regardless of how their illness is in the moment.

[hatsoffiguess]

Writeblr(?) Introduction

Hello! My name's Mikhael, I'm 20, generally summarise myself as an artist, and I've got a heap of story based peojects in different formats that I'm working on. Most of them aren't directly text-based, so I hope other writeblrs don't mind me shuffling in with my webcomic plans and what not...

About me

My favourite colour is orange and I see self-serve desert places as a personal challenge to eat enough chocolate for the next month. I really like science, both the factual side and the cool aesthetic and sci fi potential side. I'm in love with Solarpunk, which is a broad genre/movement? About looking after everyone in society, looking after the planet, and having a pro-active, optimistic approach to the future. Also the visuals are really pretty. So while almost none of my works are planned to be outright centered around Solarpunk, there'll definitely be a massive influence in the themes, designs, and world building in my projects.

I'm queer and disabled, and I have a lot of struggles with mental illness, dissociation, physical pain, I'm autistic and I've got ADHD. My disabilities have long time made it incredibly hard to work on my projects, to communicate with people, to remember things, or to see something through. So, my goals have been to work with these problems to be able to do what I want, even if I have these things making it difficult. That said, there's a big chance I'll drop off the face of the earth at some points, take forever to respond, or be a bit all over the place.

What I do

The projects I have ideas for or partly planned, or slightly started, include comics, videogames, 2D animation, a couple of novels and some short stories, and even some musical-style pieces that are basically short animated films with music and lyrics to tell a bit of a story. There might be stuff I'm forgetting. So, not everything I work on it necessarily going to come under the writeblr umbrella, but a lot of it is going to overlap.

I'll do digital art a lot, mainly painting style, but I also do drawings and pixel art sometimes! I'm building up a portfolio of a wide but organised range of styles and such, it's been a lot of fun learning new things in the process. I also do traditional art, mostly drawings and ink works. I do some painting too, mainly watercolour and some acrylic. I make small clay sculptures, too! And I'm sort of getting into small scale metal work. I can do some 2D animation, but only frame by frame stuff because I don't have software that lets me generate inbetween frames. I can play piano to a point, and I've got one song composition to my name. I'm kind of learning 3D modelling/animation and also how to make games with Unity. It's going... slow. I write fanfiction, in theory. I have this one Pokemon fanfic that's been without updates for a few years, but I'm just not in a place to work on it right now, so that's on hold. I've mainly got a bunch of little snippets and dot points for different fics apart from that.

Some of my projects

My main creative baby lately is COLOURS, which is on hiatus but getting more developed in the background. It's a webcomic about a world that's in greyscale, where the apocalypse, having been slowly encroaching as of late, is beginning to accelerate.

My main fanfic is called Like No Other, it's a pokemon fanfic. It's basically a rewrite where I focus on the plot as if it were part of one big arc with an end game instead of an ongoing, may never end series.

A novel I'm planning is called Walk With Me to Our Goodbyes; where a young man struggles with pressure, stress, loneliness, and slowly learns to make connections, use healthy coping mechanisms, and finds enjoyment in life again.

Those are my main three right now. I have a bunch more, a bunch a bunch. Tens. But they're not at the top of the priority list so I'll leave them alone for now.

Some of my OC's

Gemma Faringway- the main protagonist of COLOURS.

Puppet - I'm only in the early stages of planning for the story she's in, but I love her so much I do a lot of art with her

Pyke - they're the first original character I made! They're a super silly and goofy person that likes to annoy people a bit. They're pretty straight forward in general, but they also can be really deep- they have a lot of questions about who they are- not just their identity, but their history, origins, and future. They'll be part of a story I'm still planning, but like Puppet I enjoy finding ways to work with them in the meantime.

Well, that's all I can think to add to this. I'll probably post some of my short writing pieces on here tomorrow, maybe make a page for my WIPs. In the meantime, thanks for checking this out! I'm super interested in connecting with some other creatives, and I'll be def checking out the people that reblog this!

Ah, the person that's inspired me to kinda join in on the writeblr community is @pens-swords-stuff , thank you for enriching the community so much!

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Hi! I’ve been following your account for forever, and Ive always been curious as to if there’s a reason it seems there’s far more afab asks than amab asks?

Lee says:

One thing I’ve noticed on the blog is activity begets activity; when I (or any mod) answer a lot of asks, a lot of new asks come in because people are seeing our blog and encouraged to interact with us. In slow weeks, when the mods are busy and there aren’t many things posted, we don’t get as many questions. This can become a cycle; if we don’t post anything, nobody sends us an ask so we don’t post anything. The same thing happens to the AMAB mods.

So we do get some AMAB asks, but the AMAB mods on this blog aren’t as active as us AFAB mods are and therefore we get fewer AMAB asks and therefore the AMAB mods are less active… and so on.

To break the not-enough-questions part of the cycle, the AMAB mods asked us (the AFAB mods) to not answer the AMAB questions or they’ll have nothing to do, so instead we should save the AMAB asks to the drafts for them.

That way the AMAB asks don’t get lost in the inbox and they can easily locate AMAB asks when they’re ready to answer a question and just hop to it. 

But because said AMAB mods aren’t very active on the blog, we have like 400 AMAB asks saved in our drafts. So we keep drafting new AMAB asks, but very few end up leaving the drafts.

Our Meet the mods! page lists our current AMAB mods:

Ryn [x] they/them/theirs or she/her/hers (auxiliary)

Ryn is 21 years old and identifies as non-binary transfeminine (non-binary trans woman? Who knows). They have been to everyone for almost two years now, and (as they like to put it) in a closet with an open door for a few years before that (out to a few people). They are a white, amab, queer person with a history of mental illness. They are currently studying biology, archaeology, and music at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. Ryn still isn’t sure what Disney character they’d be, but for now, they’ll go with Violet from the Incredibles.

Callie [x] she/her/hers

Callie is a 19 year old pansexual amab trans girl. She is from Alberta, but currently lives in Southern Ontario where she is attending university. She is Chinese and Canadian First Nations. She has some mental illness and chronic skin problems. She enjoys the game magic: the gathering and playing and listening to music and is an aspiring stand up comedian. If she were a Disney Character, she would be BB-8 from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Harper [x] she/her/hers

Harper is a 22 year old trans lesbian from England. She came out on 21/04/2017 and is started hrt 14/04/2019 and is currently on the NHS waiting list. She’s a keen student of English literature, transpoetics, and leftist political theory, especially when it concerns being trans. She is white and able-bodied. She loves puppies and gucci and communism and her wife.

Pat [x] they/them/theirs can answer in Spanish

Pat is a 19-year-old nonbinary person who lives in Texas. They are Mexican/Native-American and loves writing, acting, making Youtube videos, and their cat Hera. Pat does not plan on medically transitioning, but is feminine presenting and AMAB.

Pat is disabled and is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder, and they are currently being treated for both.

Any questions for Pat can be sent to their personal blog.

Charlotte [x] She/her/hers

Charlotte is a 16 year old gay (??) AMAB trans girl who feels cute sometimes. She’s been dealing with unmedicated ADHD, depression, and anxiety up until recently, and is okay with answering any ask related to those topics. They’re currently pre-everything but plan on getting hormones and vaginoplasty in the future. They’re out as trans nearly everywhere, excluding extended family, for better or for worse.

Alexandra [link missing] She/her/hers

Alexandra is 14, AMAB, pre-everything, genderflux, Black, and omnisexual.

Autumn [link missing] she/her/hers

Autumn is a 19 year old non-binary trans woman who lives in Oklahoma. She is white, AMAB, cupiosexual, and lesbian. She had bottom surgery in 2015 and has a lot of experience with hormone therapy complications.

Autumn and her body enjoy the lovely and disabling company of many chronic and mental illnesses. She has personal experience with psychotic, mood, and eating disorders. She also has a genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and associated comorbidities (POTS, MCAS, GP, etc). She has been institutionalized, and is on medication.

Autumn is Jewish, training a service dog, dorky, and loves pizza and puns so much (like way too much). She is happy to answer any appropriate questions regarding anything she has experience with.

Kay [link missing] they/them/theirs or she/her/hers

Kay is a 19/yo trans woman who began to come out as late as 18 years old.  She considers herself pansexual as her feelings aren’t defined by the body or the parts someone has. She is white, American, and has spent a majority of her life in Ohio.  She identifies as she, but for personal purposes and comfort she tends to go by “they” when faced with unfamiliar people. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder in 2015 after spending a week in a hospital for a psych evaluation.  For Kay, Makeup and hair has been a normal thing, but, as of August 2017, she made the first small steps to fully transitioning with appointments to a trans councilor.

Kay loves her dog Roxie and her cats Buzzy and Socks.  She also has a bit of an obsession with the Forza Motorsport series… For some reason.

Roxie [x] she/her/hers

Roxie is a white, able-bodied, perisex, 19 year old trans woman from the UK. Technically she’s non-binary (166% woman, y'all) but she mostly doesn’t identify that way any more. She’s also a lesbian, so shout out to that! She’s been out the closet as trans since February 2016, and is currently working on getting put on E after years of asking.She has ADHD, and has known so for the vast majority of her life, and she’s autistic, too, which she has known since she was thirteen. She’s heavily involved with disability rights, and helps moderate a tightly-knit disability community on Skype (message her if you’re interested!). She’s also mentally ill… somehow. She’s still working that one out, if she’s quite honest.By occupation, Roxie is a librarian (libresbian? lesbrarian? We’ll work on that one.) and an actress in a youtube webseries with an overwhelmingly LGBT cast. In her spare time, she reads Marvel Comics, kicks butt as Pharah in Overwatch, and goes clubbing with her friends. If she were a Disney character, she would be Princess Star Butterfly, from Star Vs. The Forces of Evil.

———————————

If you have a question for a particular mod, @ them at the start of your ask- that makes it more likely that they’ll answer you!

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via Now That’s Some Serious Chronic Fatigue. Spoon Theory 2.0? (Patreon Link Within))

October 4, 2019

Many chronically ill people eventually learn about the “Spoon Theory” of chronic fatigue, which is basically a way to explain to healthy people what it’s like when you no longer possess (or never had) virtually unlimited mental and physical energy to do what you want.   Because it’s always the responsibility of the weakest and sickest to explain ourselves to healthy people innit.  A person’s spoons are a visual representation of their physical and mental energy reserves for the day, where a physical or mental activity “costs” one or more spoons to perform and when the spoons are gone the sick person has no choice but to stop acting and rest.  With adequate rest and recovery time, hopefully their spoon reserves will replenish by the next day but that is not always the case.  Many days, seriously ill people may have no spoons at all.

Spoon Theory was described and named by a chronically ill woman and it is pretty accurate in my own experience.  For the first time in my life, after putting myself through law school, studying for and passing the bar exam, and then working more than full time in a stressful and demanding career in addition to a lifetime of “adulting” meaning maintaining a household and nurturing various parasitic males I no longer have anywhere near the energy I once had and can now barely get anything done, regardless of urgency or import.  It’s not a matter of how important anything is anymore, nor how badly I need to or want to do it.  I am not in control of that now and it is debilitating and terrifying.

Healthy people have no idea that’s even possible and they often refuse to believe it.  And that’s an example of ableism, or discrimination in policy and practice against disabled people and in favor of healthy people.  Young people seem acutely aware of the concept of spoons, chronic illness and ableism while older people seem to have not a clue; the implications of that are terrifying but I will leave that for another day.

I recently attempted to describe my own limitations to my mother, and even though as a nurse who claims to have rigorously studied the issues and thinks she knows everything there is to know about health, wellness and chronic illness (LOL) she had never even heard of “spoons” or spoon theory.  Considering that that information is literally everywhere if one only cares to look, her research skills get an F.  Her practical knowledge gets an F.  Empathy F.  Effort F.  Fucks given on behalf of the chronically ill F.  Fucks given about me and my new normal F.   Decent human being D+.  Maybe.  Maybe there’s hope, I think to myself, and at least a D+ is better than an F in that department, although the D+ is likely generous.  It’s a pretty important department and I like to think it matters but maybe it really doesn’t.  Maybe there is just no way that healthy people will ever understand or care what it’s like to be seriously chronically ill no matter how decent they are but I decide to try.

I proceed to explain my limitations to a nurse, to my own fucking mother thusly: in a week’s time, in addition to fulfilling the basic survival needs of my business, myself and my 2 adopted shelter cats (procuring nutrition and toileting basically) I can maybe cook/prepare food 5 times, clean up the mess twice, and shower once.  That means there are at least 3 times a week where I cook/prepare food and do not clean up the mess right away.  Yes, that’s a thing that happens and no, there is nothing I can do about it.  My mom responded by shrieking “bullshit!   bullshit!” into my ear, as if that changes anything except to (more) completely alienate me and yes, to waste even more of my spoons.  My mom is a garbage disposal for my spoons and causes extreme spoon deficit on the regular, or she will if I let her.  And by “let her” I mean have any contact with her; I haven’t spoken to her in a year and a half, and very little in the past 7 years since I became seriously chronically ill and that’s why.  After her most recent outburst and what it did to my spoons I think I could easily go forever without speaking with her again.

Then yesterday I came across a post by another chronically ill blogger who described her own experience with chronic fatigue in a unique way that despite my own extreme brain fog and forgetfulness generally, I will probably never forget.  Michelle reads and comments here regularly (hi Michelle!) and has recently become a fulltime boondocker which means that she lives in wilderness areas in an RV all or almost all the time.  Like most or all chronically ill people, Michelle is a “Spoonie” and suffers from chronic fatigue and has only so many fucks to give and so much energy to burn on any given day and while it’s not up to her how many spoons she has, it is kind of up to her how she spends them.   Despite her “garbage can” diagnosis of ME/CFS she does the absolute best she can, as do we all, but in her case she has particular trouble using and maintaining her bulky and temperamental portable generator and cleaning up the dishes after she cooks and eats.

The really striking (and totally relateable) part of her experience, for me, was this:

Michelle often parks her RV in bear country and dirty dishes attract bears and she knows that.  But still she cannot necessarily muster the mental and physical energy needed to clean the dishes right away and the task must be put off until the next day or possibly even the next.  Get it?   Now that’s some serious fatigue, and I (and she) don’t mean to say that she has any worse fatigue than any other chronically ill person.  She may and she may not, how would that even be measured?  Rather, I (we) mean that chronic fatigue is serious, it is seriously and unbelievably debilitating and in this post Michelle explains the reality of it so well.  She cannot do anything more than what she can do, even if when her life literally depends on it.  And in her situation her life actually does depend on it.

Do you see what I am saying?  The import and urgency of the task changes nothing, NOTHING about what she is and is not able to actually do.  When her spoons are gone that’s it, and the only way she might have a spoon left over to do the dishes is if she never even cooked at all. Do you see the problem there?  Because I do.  She can either risk being attacked by bears or not cook (and therefore maybe not even eat) at all.  From what I’ve gathered through reading her blog, Michelle will probably not decide to stop boondocking if she can help it and she has (actual, valid) reasons for that too, one of which being that boondocking gives her spoons, being in nature gives her spoons, and being peaceful and quiet preserves the spoons she does have.  If she wasn’t boondocking in beautiful natural areas, maybe she would have even less spoons than she has now.  Maybe she would have no spoons at all.

THAT is the fucking reality of serious chronic fatigue and all the cursing and shrieking and being berated by others in the world will not change it.  It doesn’t matter how much you wish things were different.  You no longer make the rules.  The woman who gestated and birthed me does not make the rules.  Michelle doesn’t make the rules.  I don’t make the rules.  If we ever made the rules we don’t make them now and there is no reality-based reason to think that we will make those rules for ourselves ever again.  I would beseech healthy people to attempt to grok that, to please for the love of God grok that shit already but even that doesn’t matter!  It doesn’t matter if healthy people grok it or not, or at least their understanding will not in itself make sick people’s material reality better or worse.

What will help, though, is if the people we rely on for comfort, companionship, conversation, money, shelter or whatever don’t waste the few spoons we have by demanding we explain shit, or destroy those spoons in the garbage disposal of their shitty shrieking ignorance.  Now that would actually help.  And by help I mean stop making it fucking worse.   That is the reality of chronic illness and chronic fatigue and that reality cannot and will not be changed, or anytime soon, not until these serious, debilitating and fatiguing chronic illnesses are able to be treated or cured.  That is not the case today where most chronic illnesses including the one I suffer from, Crohn’s disease, produce symptoms that can maybe be somewhat managed sometimes (and maybe not) but that is not the same thing as treatment and it’s hell and gone from a cure.

__________________________

And on that note, I would like to leave a link to my Patreon and ask that my readers consider and pass along this most recent request for donations.  Despite my symptoms and their all-encompassing effects on my life, I have made some progress towards getting disability and housing benefits, but it looks like I am going to need to buy myself more time (or have it purchased for me as it were).  The game has now changed somewhat and with much (well, total) effort on my part, I now have additional medical evidence to support my claims, and my disability advocate has put me in contact with an organization that may be able to help: it’s an organization that helps autistic people maintain their independence and I am hopeful that they might actually come through.  This whole time, it has seemed as if no one really cared about the Crohn’s diagnosis but now that I have an additional diagnosis of high functioning autism, my disability advocates seem hopeful that they now have something they can actually use.  And importantly, they seem keen on doing some of the legwork to actually make that happen, like helping me fill out and drop off forms and such.  That is huge.

In a nutshell, it is very important that I stay where I am for now and not lose this apartment which does take housing vouchers if I am approved for one.  That means, as soon as I am approved I will start receiving rental assistance without having to wait for an eligible apartment to become available because I am already in one.  It also means I will not have to move again, when the move I made last year nearly killed me and left me seriously depleted of spoons for an entire year.  If I have to do that again, I literally very well may be unable to do it and if I can’t, it won’t matter that my life depends on it.   Can’t is can’t when you are chronically ill.  I know many of my readers know exactly what that means.

Thank you so much for reading and thank you for your support.

Comments Open.

[sweetandsavageautistic]

Hey, I found more. Get ready to lose some more brain cells:

I don't know if this is weird but I find teens and adults with autism are really cute.

Just make autism illegal. Simple. (This isn’t infantilization, but it’s ridiculous).

All the people with autism are so lovely 😊. They see the world around then in a different way. They areinnocent and kind in their heart ❣.

People with autism are so beautiful and adorable. They're parents are heroes

people don't talk about autism as much as they should. people with autism are fucking adorable okay like theye beautifulllllllll i fucking love how theyre so creative and nice and funny and can just light up a room i love them so much stop sleeping on them thanks.

Say hello to Jay. I had the privilege and honor to spend this afternoon with Jay. Jay is a 28-years old young adult with autism. Jay is almost non-verbal and speaks only in short phrases or sentences and is completely and totally dependent on others in his daily living. The look in his eyes and the smile on his face just lights up the whole room. Children and adults with autism display the highest levels of innocence and purity of mankind. They are truly exceptional in every aspect of their lives and they have exceptional parents too. Stay tuned for more news about an upcoming collaboration between Shift to Shine and Autism Sings. How many Hellos would Jay get? Please share, comment and like in order to support Jay and Autism Sings so we can create a better way of living for adults with autism.

Although our son is still a teen and has severe autism, I can imagine that this will be us too. Many children and adult children with disabilities (who I know) are very affectionate and have this innocent love.  ❤

That's freaking sad 😔 to do to ANYONE; especially w/ SPECIAL God GIVEN talents and skills grr; also known as Aspergers disorder 😔. They are very sweet, MOSTY INNOCENT 😇 kids and adults which I know some of them 😳 💥 fr!!

It is evident that you have never in your life interacted with a child or person with special needs, and for that I am sad for you- as you will never know the meaning of true innocence.

"LOVE this book! Captures the humor, personality, innocence, and essence of a character with autism, as well as the concerns of a family dealing with their own issues--grief, adult siblings, responsibilities, assumptions, etc.

Thought-provoking topics and awareness presented in novel form that is a fun read for anyone (not just autism parents). Full disclosure: I am a parent of a young man with autism. I have over 25 years of experience--reading fiction/nonfiction books, newsletters, articles, legislation and science reviews, and watching movies and television episodes depicting characters on the autism spectrum. This novel is, by far, my favorite depiction." --Renata Irving

The beauty in Cameron’s disability is that his innocence remains protected.

All the people with autism are so lovely 😊. They see the world around then in a different way. They areinnocent and kind in their heart ❣.

Honestly I believe children and adults with autism are actually normal because they are innocent and don't really know the craziness of the world they are just pure at heart ✌️

(I’ve shared this next one already, but fuck it. We’re gonna look at it again, cuz why the fuck not?)

Dear families I am begging you to listen to me. Over the last few years I have heard heart breaking stories of our young adults getting into trouble with the law in a variety of ways. The individuals with autism are usually innocent, entrapped or unaware of the situation unfolding. Several of these young adults have served time and families have lost huge amounts of money trying to protect their children from the system.

Here are my recommendations based on these families experiences.

Here is my plea: 1. Get guardianship. You can always give it up later. 2. Teach your child to reach out and use you as a resource. Teach them to ask for help even as adults. 3. Being a helicopter parent is important as we release our adults in the world. There will be a huge transition and we should be actively involved in double checking they are handling life okay and not being taken advantage of or bullied in any way. (NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO!) 4. Be brutally honest about your child’s strengths and weaknesses and put measures in place to help them build those weaknesses up. Set goals and really think about what tools they need and create them. Denial is not your child’s friend. 5. Understand all the technology your child uses and double check it. There are people including law enforcement on social media and playing games who may entrap your child without the child knowing they are doing anything wrong. According to Homeland Security Officer I talked to there is no privacy in any of the technology platforms and every thing is recorded. 6. Make sure to put your child thru the Be Safe Program. Be Safe helps our young adults interact safely with law enforcement. One of the issues discussed is understanding their right to remain silent and their right for an attorney. You have to understand this right to get this right and it needs to be explicitly taught.

We want our individuals with autism to be included in society but society does not always accommodate them and that is ESPECIALLY true of the legal system. I have tried for years to do trainings for courts, so far I have trained people who work within the system excluding the real people needing the training like judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys. Our Be Safe Program has made huge changes in our relationships with law enforcement but the legal system is still a train wreck. So we must be very vigilant and protect our kids!

Autistic people are so innocent and cute i just can't 

RIP Joe Clyde Daniels; It saddens us when you wake up to hear news like this. People with autism are so loving and we can learn a lot from them. Heaven has a new angel.

I wish more people with disabilities such as autism would be given more employment, always happy and helpful. Too many useless able bodied people with no customer service skills

'Atypical' on Netflix makes me want to cry, group of folk laughing at a guy cause he has autism,people with autism are so precious It's horrible how in this age people say autistic as an insult. People can't help autism and people with autism are precious

happy autism awareness acceptance month! ppl with autism are the most precious people ever and we don't deserve them

Always trying to understand how my brother actually feels,People with autism are just as precious as ones without it

'Atypical' on Netflix makes me want to cry, group of folk laughing at a guy cause he has autism,people with autism are so precious

Happy forever children's day to the people having autism.

(But bitch, I’m not done. There’s more, but I’ll wait a bit)

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Autism is a very peculiar beast. I’ve often heard it said that there’s two parts to a disability, managing the disability itself, and managing everyone’s reaction to your disability. Autism alone is not too terrible a burden, but combined with people it’s a daily struggle to send the right signals,get the right information, learn what you need to know and what you don’t. Autism is studied from the focus of the caretaker, not the autistic themselves. Special interests for example. Autistics tend to focus on certain subjects, fully immersing themselves in the lore and knowhow and why. But because these studies are from the perspective of the caretaker, only “abnormal” ones are noticed. Trains. Computers. Specific dates.

Star Wars. 

Of all the autistics I’ve interacted with, online and in real life, Star Wars is by far the most common special interest. It slips under the radar because it’s a fandom, of course people are interested. But due to this, I never understood how special Star Wars was, beyond all the other fandoms I loved. I read and breathed and loved Star Wars. Star Wars became a key part of my daydreams, something that remains to this day. Star Wars was easier to sit through, easier to learn from, almost more real than the people around me. For a while, I drifted away, but then I drifted back through SWR, this time with the knowledge of what it meant.

Lothal. The loth cats. Ezra. The purrgil. Endless discussions on the Jedi and their philosophy, on Kanan and Hera’s relationship. Fanfics and fanart ranging from fluffy to dull, simple to epic. You ever heard of a thing called flow, psychologically? It’s when a person is totally immersed in an activity, in a state of energized focus.  SWR is my flow zone, a place of rejuvenation, my own little form of meditation for a brain that will never be able to meditate the usual way.

What was it that clicked? The beasts, I suppose. Animals have always been my calling. But the rebellion stung me as well, a topic written well before things like BLM and the election turned resistance into a thing of the present. Rebels can lose. Rebellion can take a long time. Rebels need cute things, fun things, family, to keep them together and whole when it seems like nothing they do changes anything.

The Jedi, like the stoics of old, try to hold off grief at the gate. Don’t get too attached and you won’t be too hurt. But it, along with a thousand other things, never worked for me. I have unusual reactions to things. Things that should have me sobbing just don’t hurt, and minor things cause me to break down. Angry at myself for mourning the wrong thing or for not mourning the right ones, I felt a certain kinship with Anakin and his own inability to get his feelings to just work right for once. Sometimes, I felt like an uncaring monster, and others like a giant crybaby, but rarely, if ever, like I was doing the right thing. I never learned to mourn.

I suppose that’s the best and final lesson of SWR, how to mourn. When Ezra loses his parents, Kanan comforts him. When Sabine breaks down during training, she’s surrounded by support. The key is not to avoid strong emotion, but to admit strong emotion is something that can’t be borne alone, and to reach out to others for help. We’re a social species, biologically, meant to survive together. There’s benefits to being completely independent, able to completely handle yourself, but ultimately there is only one antidote to grief, and that’s time, tears, and sharing it with others until the grief can be worn off. I rarely reacted in the proper way and thus rarely received comfort from others. But through the friends I made here, I could lean on others like I’d always needed to and deal with emotions as they came, rather than trying to force myself to feel as I should.

When I got the message in April that it would be the last season and 15 episodes at that, I felt sick. I’d always assumed it would get five seasons, so I wasn’t prepared. Change is difficult for autistic people, especially endings. Would the characters die? What would change? What would come after? But I did what I’d learned, gave myself time knowing it wouldn’t hurt forever, and leaned on other people for support. It spiked a couple times, most notably with the announcement that they’d be airing two episodes at a time, because I feared they’d rushed production of the final season to make way for The Last Jedi. And when TLJ failed, and trilogies were being handed out like candy to whoever asked, I felt a new sense of dread worrying that I might end up parting with Star Wars itself. But slowly, through friends and deathfics and the march of time, I came to accept it. And when the time came, I was ready to say goodbye, to have one final, fantastic ride with the Ghost crew and the people I’d met and come to love. Through the emotional maelstrom that was Kanan’s death, and the impending fear of having to let go, I held on. I let myself feel. I leaned on others.

SWR came out the fall I started college, and I’ll be graduating this spring. My first memory of my antidepressants working was my happiness at seeing a “Fire Across the Galaxy” gif set, and more memories than I can count are tied to it.So as I bid farewell to it, I’m getting ready to bid farewell to this last stage of my life. In a weird way, I grew up with these characters.

It wasn’t perfect. There are elements that could have been done better, unpleasant fandom experiences. But honestly, thank you to the fandom, to the cast and crew and creators, to everyone that made this experience what it was. You gave this square peg a square hole to fit into, helped me learn things I couldn’t before. And I will always be grateful for that.

May the force be with you, wherever you go from here.

[ocpdzim]

On a more personal note (follow up to this post): 

Seeing a movement that I believed in so wholeheartedly, and still do believe in to an extent, advocate for stripping my human rights and those of other mentally ill people is heartbreaking. It feels like a personal betrayal, and I don’t really know where to go from here about it. I still absolutely believe that we need gun control, but I don’t know if I can support a movement that’s clearly now decided to be antagonistic to the human rights of mentally ill and disabled people. Because that’s me! I’m mentally ill and disabled. Most people I know and care about are mentally ill and/or disabled, too. I can pass as NT and abled fairly well as long as I put in a lot of effort, don’t encounter anything too upsetting, and don’t have to do too much physical activity. But I can’t keep that up constantly. And there are plenty of people who can’t do it at all. A mentally ill or disabled person’s rights should not be determined by our ability to fake being “normal,” or by our ability to avoid ever going to a fucking doctor so that we don’t get put into a police database. Not too long ago, like, within the memory of some of my followers probably, I was having even more serious trouble with my mental health than I am right now. I could not pass as “normal.” I was terrified that I might not even be able to pass as “sane enough to not get locked up” any more if things didn’t get better. Things did get better, and I’m not even really sure why. I was lucky. But I might not be lucky forever, you know? I’m not cured just because I’m relatively fine right now and not currently having fits of paranoia every single night. I still get that shit sometimes, and for all I know it might get just as bad as it had been a while ago again, like, whenever. And I already cannot seek treatment for it, because I’ve been flat out told by doctors who do not know the full extent of my issues that “if” I had some of my less pretty symptoms then I’d be forcibly medicated. Even without knowledge of my worse and more stigmatized symptoms, I’ve been threatened with institutionalization multiple times. One particularly exchange with a psychologist was so horrifying that I remember one of her statements almost word for word years later: “If you won’t take the medicine, I’ll have you sent to the psych ward out at the beaches, and they won’t be as nice as me. If you won’t take your medicine there, they’ll hold you down and force it down your throat.” You want to know what she was “treating” me for? What she thought was the full extent of my problems? Moderate depression, “OCP” (as she was of the opinion that I was too young to have OCPD, which my previous psychologist had diagnosed me with, at the time, but thought that it still fit better than OCD, which she incorrectly thought could not be comorbid with OCPD, and so she just decided that if she lopped off the D then it was OK) and anxiety. She did not know I was suicidal. She did not know that I was dealing with mild psychosis. She didn’t know I had intrusive thoughts, or that I dissociated. She didn’t know about my eating disorder. She didn’t even know I was autistic. The medicine was Zoloft, which I’d already had an incredibly bad reaction (so bad I had to drop out of school and have literally not completely recovered to this day) to in the very recent past. Like, within the year. I was very lucky that my family members who were also in the room would not tolerate that shit. I sobbed and threw a tissue box at the doctor’s head, my mom yelled at the doctor and never took me back. If my family had sided with the doctor, there’d have been nothing I could have done about it. The aforementioned problem with the Zoloft is a horrible story involving 2 other medicines as well, a total disregard for my wishes, lying to me and my family, and basically the complete destruction of my adolescence, so bad that it’s had far-reaching effects on not only my mental health but my physical health as well. I don’t want to discuss it in detail right now because I’d rather not spend my evening crying. I’ve experienced some of the horrors of the mental health system firsthand. I’ve also had some great experiences with better doctors, who’ve helped me a lot. But it only takes one shitty doctor to put someone in a database if a database is available. It already only takes one shitty doctor to ruin someone’s life, and there’s not really that much that all the other, better doctors can do about it aside from trying their best to help the victim heal. Creating a police database of mentally ill people would give shitty doctors, whether out of malice or incompetence, another opportunity to harm patients in their care. An opportunity that would impact not only the patient’s mental and physical health, an opportunity that would not only potentially burden the patient with outrageous medical bills to deal with the fallout of it, but an opportunity that would render a patient forever labeled in the eyes of the law as a lesser person, that would render them forever at risk of being murdered or institutionalized against their will for the mere crime of existing. An opportunity to cause damage that no future, better doctor could mitigate, that no amount of money could buy respite from. I really can’t overstate how horrific an idea it is, or how  genuinely afraid I am. It hurts. 

[lifeaccordingtonixxie]

Autism Speaks (the ugly truth)

OK. So I talk a lot about my future in-laws, my fiance, but not a lot about my family. So this is going to be a little just about me and my family, and experiences. But mainly, about Autism and Autism awareness.

My parents had me in Oct of 92, and their lives changed. They had their first child, me a perfect daughter ( :D ) But what they had no idea was in February of 97 their lives would forever never be normal. My life would never be normal. My amazing, thoughtful, and often crazy little brother was born. 

Right off the bat there were problems. I was young still so I don’t remember much. But I do remember my brother having seizures, and having to get injections and shots, and get poked and tests ran frequently. Him being on steroid injections to help control the seizures I’m pretty sure. And my mom would do all of this from home.

I just want to give my mom and dad the absolute biggest shout out! My mom especially she stopped working to be a full time mom to a special needs son, and a very active daughter. She gave my brother shots, took him to Dr.’s appointments, therapies, and everything growing up. While juggling all of my brothers set backs, she had to deal with all of mine. I was an active child, I did sports and piano/music lessons, but I also had my fair share of trips to Riley Children's Hospital for my what we thought then was a pediatric heart murmur (turned out to just be normal still have it) and my renal system wasn’t so good as a child. So I was also in and out of dr.’s offices and hospital visits and stays. So my parents are rock stars in my eyes. 

Anyway back to my little brother. Nicholas (Nic, bub) is my favorite person ever! I hate him sometimes I’m not even going to lie.

If my memory serves me right, Nic was diagnosed pretty early in life with Autism, and fortunately he is highly functioning. But him being high functioning was only thanks to endless Therapies as a child. We would spend our week, outside of school at therapies, OT, speech, pretty much anything you could think to help him function like a somewhat “normal” person. 

Our lives were never normal. I grew up quick. My brother needed my help and I’ve always just had the care giving personality. Anytime I had the opportunity to help with therapy I did. We had people coming into our house to help him, and we would go to the health center to get him his therapies. Thankfully at the time it was right across the street from Fairbanks park, so ya know park visits for me! Him stimming was the worst time for me. I was always so embarrassed, so not thankful at the time to have a special needs brother. He was just my brother, and I hated that he was embarrassing me. I was very self conscious growing up I mean who am I kidding I still am. But him flailing his arms, moaning, making just weird movements, to a child is embarrassing. So I only could imagine how bub feels when that happens to him. I never really knew normal. I had my normal.

I thankfully had friend, who accepted my brother like I never knew one of my friends would. And as we got closer in our friendship, and my parents basically accepted her as their child, she accepted my brother. (I’m crying writing this segment, because I can’t thank her enough for how much she means to Nic) But the best part, Nic accepted her! Which for an autistic child, it’s harder for them to make relationships, and friendships alone. It was hard to get that relationship with me, his biological sister. Yes, we’ve always had the sibling bond, but it’s different when you become friends as siblings. 

My best friend, mentioned in the above paragraph, lived next door and we hung out basically every day. She became a part of our family, and that moment changed my life. She was and still is the sister I always wanted, and well needed. 18 years ago we met thank god for that. I could never have asked for a better best friend, sister, and even more a bigger sister for my brother. And to be honest he likes her more than me. She’s the fun sister. Fine by me. I know he still loves me. But my lovely Catherine took in my brother, accepted him for everything that he is, and treated him normally. The first time, one of my friends wasn’t awkward around my brother, she just knew, and she let it go. And I could not be more thankful, and more appreciative of the sister she became for him. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and some higher power whatever you believe in, gave me her. But she will get her own special shout out blog/vlog soon.

Growing up explaining autism to anyone was difficult. I didn’t really know how to explain it’s just a developmental disorder. “ a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior.” The exact definition of Autism. I just said my brother has Autism, and he’s a little different. Try not to stare. 

The stares. They’re the hardest. When Nic would stim in public, we would get so many stares. You can just feel it, honestly. And that’s the worst. I didn’t want to go anywhere with my brother. Like anywhere that wasn’t the dr, which we still got stares there too, or therapies. I didn’t want to go to the park with him, he was embarrassing. The stares were embarrassing, And it makes you just want to go off on people. But I’m a quiet, and reserved kind of girl, well I was back then. As we got older especially when I started driving, I took my brother anywhere I could. He was older, he had endless hours of therapies, to make him the extremely high functioning person he is today. And I could not be more proud of him. He recently just started painting. and OMG! This young man is amazing!

Siblings don’t get the attention they normally need. I didn’t. Plain and simple. I ended up spending a lot of my time with my great-grandparents. I was my grandpa’s little girl. That’s where I got my attention. I knew mom and dad needed to give bub all the attention they could, even at a young age. They were helping him, I needed to be self sufficient and take responsibility for myself. Let me tell you all I did was go to my grandpa cry and get whatever I wanted. I was spoiled to a fucking t I was spoiled rotten. Grandpa made sure I had everything. The newest barbie, or whatever toy I wanted. The best piano lessons, voice lessons, athletics, anything I wanted. I got. I feel like it would have been different, the relationship with them, if my brother wasn’t special needs. So for that I’m thankful. People really don’t talk about the siblings of special needs. Growing up my mom started a parents of autism support group, and at the time I was old enough to be the supervising child for the kids on the spectrum and their siblings. (well really myself and the other older siblings just hung out) I met people there that were purely awesome. And I got to meet other siblings, share war stories, and just be there for each other. I strongly suggest siblings of special needs find their niche, find someone who understands. And this is another chance for a great shout out to the fiance, who also grew up with siblings who had problems, so he gets it. It makes life better. He is also the oldest so he understands the pressure of helping take care of them. 

Autism is one hell of a disability, but creates the most genuine people who surround the situation. So thank you to the friends of our family who have stuck around all these years. I love and appreciate every single one of you, who has accepted our crazy little family, and loved us anyway.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to read our story, I needed to put this out in the world because it’s just kind of important for awareness and people understanding what daily typical life is like. 

I’m going to link a youtube vlog I watch daily. They show the autistic life as real as it can possibly be. Go check them out, and give them a follow.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZwd0qneWpqUqLnM5nwZpsA

[onisionrants]

Drug/Mental Illness/Intelligence Rant

One of the things that bugs me with onisions rhetoric of “drug users are dumb” and such is that is totally not true. I know, I know another drug post, but with the ask that I got I want to open up discussion of my views on other drugs and the types that use drugs/what they use. First things first is many creative types have some type of mental illness, not all but more than not. They become successful because they see things a little different, from anything like music to fashion to art. I too am a creative type. I make my living dancing (burlesque) and costume making, I’m lucky to be able to travel and make friends with people of all different backgrounds. I’m friend’s with side show people, burlesque/boylesquers, artist and traveling comics. Some of these people are pretty famous in their own rights, this is their livelihood. Many people use their art to escape their pain, and I like many of my friends smoke. Again by no means am I saying every entertainer does drugs/drinks but it’s common. I’ve known quite a few alcoholics (common with comics mainly), and some major druggies (heronie and such); one being a comic that’s actually quite successful and very smart (worked for the gov in a high up position). In fact there are also lawyers and other high paying job side job entertainers as well. Now for a even more successful story. So I know this guy, he is a real prick, but he’s hella smart. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but even on his own right he is a multimillionaire…. by late 20s. He does blow and smokes more than your average joe. Btw his company is a green company, he’s created ways to make a different kind of green energy. A study done in the last few years has even came out to say that women with the highest I.Q are more likely to do blow or pot. So now let’s go on to Greg bashing the I.Q of young girls. Again online test do not count, also I.Q test is only one way to measure intelligence. So I was a mess as a child and pretty privileged, my mother took me to Dr.’s all the time and actually worked with me to help me over come some of my disabilities. I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia and was tested quite often for my I.Q from age 5-18 because my disabilities made it hard to calculate my I.Q. It’s very common in general as you age that you’re I.Q rises ( so gregs at an advantage to young girls anyway), but for people like me it’s harder to generate. I also want it to be clear I’m not trying to brag here, once again I.Q is only one form of intelligence, but from the time I was really young I started with about a 113ish by the time I graduated I was around 130 and last time I got checked higher than that. When I use to take written test I’d score low, but when read a test I’d score high; because of my ADHD and dyslexia I couldn’t read really read till I was in middle school. This isn’t an uncommon thing. Like I’ve said before Leonardo DaVinci was also dyslexic (and probably a “super dyslexic” due to being left handed, as the Smithsonian says) and had horrible grammer and spelling for the time and his status, we all know the mess that Van Gogh was, and many other great minds with various illness from schizophrenia, autism, to depression. When I was younger I also wanted to work with the mentally handicapped, my uncle is also handicapped so this is still a passion of mine. I have worked with the handicapped in a couple ways and they treach you more than most people, not only compassion but in many ways. My uncle for example has a I.Q of 70 at best. He’s mentally forever 7 and just learned how to read in his 50s. Baseball is his thing, he can tell you any stats of any player ever, he has countless memorabilia and while he can’t read he has memorized almost every baseball fact ever. He also has memorized other things important to him with pretty much photogenic memory of his whole life. I worked with a severely autistic boy that couldn’t really communicate in normal ways (he had sayings like “ Ernie’s mad” when he was upset, his name wasn’t Ernie). His parents were awfully rich so they put him thru many test and in many ways he was very smart. He had photogenic memory. His therapist gave him over 500 cards; he looked at them all once and she removed a few and he put them all back, right where they were meant to be. He could look at the box of a 1000 piece puzzle and put a middle piece in the middle and it wouldn’t move. Though many people *cough* Greg *cough* would shame these people with ~low I.Q’s~ I don’t necessarily consider any of them dumb. And yes some kids I worked with were basically vegetables, and it was sad, but many of them had something to them. I’ll end this by bringing drugs back into it now, many different drugs have been used by many different people of all different ~intelligence~. From kids with epilepsy using pot to ease their seizures to writers and artists and many different ~drugs~. While I don’t mess with hard drugs (I’ve seen it ruin too many lives ) I understand that need for something. I personally don’t want to be with an active junkie, but I have no room to judge; I use to be a lush and find alcohol way worse than pot for me. Again not saying everyone can’t handle alcohol, but just like everyone can’t handle maryjane, some people can’t handle alcohol (or other drugs). I understand recovery, smoking has again pretty much stopped my self medicating drinking, and I encourage anyone to find that lesser evil. Be it pot or pharma drugs, or alcohol, do what you can handle and doesn’t hurt anyone. Many of the ex junkies I know now smoke. Greg has a very sheltered view on things, he argues with doctors, he has the same brainwashed views that 90’s kids got from those ~war on drugs~ commercials. Things have changed. He only really interacts with people of his picking, with people that at least humor his horrible views (from mostly grooming). He does not try to understand where people are coming from or sympathize with them. He puts down everyone, no matter if it’s a DOCTOR, with no educational background what so ever in the topics. Elon Musk said it best for me ( you know Greg guy that makes those cars you flaunt) “ You can learn anything from books and people”, Greg hasn’t read a book in over 14 years and limited real interaction with people. Meanwhile he puts people like me down that have read more books this year then he’s ~published~ (mainly history) and am very empathetic and social. Btw Greg, though I don’t think you’re smart by any real means I don’t think you’re that dumb. I’d place him at most a real I.Q of 116ish, Ted Bundy level; mainly cause of his charisma.