okay. listen. if you ever find yourself falling into a new ideological circle, pay attention. if you notice that you’re among people who define themselves as part of an “in-group” with a pre-prepared human “enemy” to constantly rail against—if everyone fantasizes about the mental state of these loathsome monsters, if they participate in witch hunts or (perhaps worse) poke bears and court harassment on purpose to comfort each other over—get the fuck out. you haven’t been enlightened to some grand conspiracy, there are no evil “enemies” or “degenerates” trying to rip apart the fabric of society, and you do not have the moral duty to “enlighten” anyone to whatever you think the “truth” is. it’s neither safe nor normal to spend hours of your day fighting with strangers on the internet
a lot of people wear this shit like a badge of honor, but it’s also not normal to hide your “in-group” status as a form of martyrdom, relishing when the “enemy” slips up around you. it’s comforting in the moment, but in the long run, you’re alienating yourself from the world outside of your bubble. the more you alienate yourself, the more vulnerable and lonely you become, and the harder it is to reject the comfort of belonging to the “in-group”
i’m writing this from the perspective of someone who grew up in a cesspool of awful, cult-like rural churches—which is its own situation—but i see similar shit happening in online communities all the time, both within and 800 miles outside of my own ideological principles. yes, every toxicass radfem i block seems to be trapped in a version of this vicious cycle, but i also see it happening in random queer circles and niche fandom communities. no one is immune, not even me. i’ve watched people fall into this shit and never make it out. be careful
i talked about it a little bit already but i have things to say about it. for context, i was born with amniotic band syndrome. the amniotic band wrapped around my left wrist in utero and stunted the growth of my hand. i was born with about half a palm, four nubs for fingers, and a twisted half of a thumb. i can open and close my thumb and pinkie joint like a claw.
yesterday at work i had a shift in the room with 5-10 year old kids. i had my left hand hidden in my sleeve (a bad habit of mine). a kid asked if he could see my hand, and even though internally i was debating running into traffic, i said “sure you can” and showed him my hands. he stared for a moment, looking disturbed, and then said “i don’t want to look at that anymore”. that hurt to hear, but i understand that kids are new to the world and he probably didn’t mean it out of malice. i put my hand away again, told him that it was okay, and that i was just born that way.
he then went on to talk about how he knows a kid with a similar hand to mine and called it “ugly”. i told him that wasn’t a very kind thing to say and that he wouldn’t feel good if someone said that to him, and he replied that no one would say that to him—because he has “normal hands”, and he’s glad he does because otherwise he’d be “ugly”. i tried to talk with him for a bit about how everybody is born differently, but he just started talking about a girl he knows with a “messed up face” and pulled on his face to make it look droopy. i went on some more about how it wasn’t very kind to talk about people that way, but the conversation moved on to something else.
i’ve told my supervisors about it and they’re going to have a talk with his mom. what i wanted to say is this: i’m genuinely not upset with the kid. kids are young and naturally curious, and he clearly simply hasn’t been taught about disabled people and kind ways to speak to/about others. which is why i am upset with his parent(s). i know he’s encountered visibly deformed/disabled people before (he said so himself!), yet his parent(s) clearly haven’t had any kind of discussion with him about proper language and behavior. i knew from birth that some people were just different than others, but my parents still made a point to assert to be kind to and accepting of others. i wonder if adults in his life are the type of people to hush him and usher him away when he points out someone in a wheelchair. that kind of thing doesn’t teach politeness. it tells children that disabled people are an Other than can’t be acknowledged or spoken about; which, to a child, means disability must be something bad.
i’m lucky enough that this was a relatively mild incident, and that i’m a grownup with thicker skin. i’m worried about the other kids he mentioned to me. has he been talking to them this way? when i was a kid, i had other kids scream, cry, and run away at the sight of my hand. or follow me around pointing at me and laughing at me. or tell me i couldn’t do something because i was ugly or incapable or whatever. one time a girl at an arcade climbed to the top of the skeeball machine, pointed at me, and screamed at me to put my hand away and wouldn’t stop crying until she couldn’t see me anymore. another time, a kid saw my hand, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran into my friend’s arms, crying hysterically about how i was scaring her. that second incident made me cry so hard i threw up when i got home. i can kind of laugh it off now, but having people react to me that way as a child is something i’m still getting over. why do you think i have a habit of keeping my hand in my sleeve? it just irritates me to see children that have clearly not been taught basic manners and kindness—their parents Clearly missed something pretty important .
Today, my 15 day hunger strike is officially over. The solidarity and strength I feel is incredibly powerful and overwhelming. I can’t even properly put into words how fulfilling these past 2 weeks have been. I appreciate everyone who donated to Anera in honour of my hunger strike, and my friends who participated in solidarity.
My time off tumblr was freeing, though learning of all the hate campaigns for me and my friends and now receiving conspiracy theories about the people in my life has left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m grateful to have this platform so I can do everything in my power to help Palestine, but it’s hard for me to not become angry every time I log in to this site and there is less focus on Palestine and more focus on hate. It has become obvious there are some people who follow me because they want to learn about and help Palestine, but even more people who are only here to speculate on my personal life and view me as a fictional character.
I love and appreciate the Palestinian community I have found on tumblr, but it feels like now the site has turned into all of us having to always do everything we possibly can to get people to focus on Palestine while everyone else can use our efforts for performative reasons. It is not something I want to be a part of, and it does not make me feel good. The past 15 days have given me the clarity to see all of this for what it is, and so for the time being, I am going to continue to focus on the activism I can do in person, and more selectively use this blog to bring attention to gofundmes and resources. I hope this comes across as genuine as I feel right now, and helps some of you see how exploitative this website has become for Palestinians.
There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.
If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.
Hey, if you have speech impediments, you are so amazing.
If you stutter or have a lisp or misspeak easily or you have a flat affect or a limited verbal vocabulary or if your voice is AAC or if you just have a difference in your vocality, you are so incredibly important and amazing.
Just know that your voice is yours. Nobody will ever be able to truly take it away. Your voice is part of you, and you deserve to make it as true to you as you deem fit. I hope you have the space to grow with your voice and whatever about it makes it unique.
It was Maid Day today yesterday a week ago so I got struck by inspiration to draw the worsties, and it ran away from me into a whole AU where they’re coworkers at a maid cafe.
She’s a med student & this is just a part time job, and this is his depression job while he gets his life back together. He needs something he can be workaholic about to forget what it’s like having a personal life and personal issues. He’s actually the accountant, but the new hire janitor (Izutsumi) doesn’t show up for half her shifts and is a sloppy worker, so he gets the extra work of doing her job on top of his because he’s undervalued and overworked. Of course, janitors also have an uniform to keep the aesthetic cohesion as they go about cleaning the place, of course.
Senshi’s the part time cook you only see slivers off, he’s kind and warm when you do see him and have a chat but most shifts he’s in and out the kitchen without a trace. Laios and Falin are regulars because Falin and Marcille are besties & in the same med school, Laios accompanies Falin as she visits her friend at work and gets hooked on the food. Chilchuck has to remind Marcille to work instead of chatting with Falin for an hour, and next thing he knows she’s distracting him from work too.
That’s it that’s the AU. Inspired by this idol AU fanart a bit <3
This was not meant to be birthday gift but well…… Happy bday Chil!!!
Pac: I saw that there will be a QSMP event on the 24th, right? Some people messaged me asking if… if I would participate, and what I have to say is: we will see on the 24th. I'm not going to say anything else. Because you know how I am, if I start to talk here, no matter how much I try not to talk, in 10 seconds I'm going to say more than I should, you know?
[Reading a Chat message] “Since when can the dead participate in an event?” WHAT?! WHAT?! [Reading chat] "Ghost Pac." [He makes a doubtful expression] What are you trying to say here? What are you trying to say here???
It’s ok, ok, alright, alright, alright, it’s ok! I'll talk since you won't drop it, ok, fine, here's the thing: Felps– Felps appeared and... resurrected me. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, it has nothing to do with that, it has nothing to do with that, I'm… [Laughs]
(BIG thank you to sebbs12 for the translation help!)
[ Full Subtitle Transcript ↓ ]
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Pac: I saw that there will be a QSMP event on the 24th, right? Some people messaged me asking if… if I would participate, and what I have to say is: we will see on the 24th. That's all I'm going to say, that's what I'll say. We'll see on the 24th, we'll see on the 24th.
And that's it, that's all I'm going to say, that's all I'm going to say, that's it! What I'm going to say– I'm not going to say anything else. Because you know how I am, if I start to talk here, no matter how much I try not to talk, in 10 seconds I'm going to say more than I should, you know? We'll have to see on the 24th. That's what I'm going to say, that's all I'm going to say, I can't say more than that. I'll leave it at that, yeah… We'll see, we'll see, on the 24th, on the 24th, on the 24th. You will have to wait.
[Reading a Chat message] “Since when can the dead participate in an event?” WHAT?! WHAT?! [Reading chat] "Ghost Pac." [He makes a doubtful expression] What are you trying to say here? What are you trying to say here?
Anyways, write it down on your calendar, mark your calendars guys, the 24th is the QSMP event. It’s ok, ok, alright, alright, alright, it’s ok! I'll talk since you won't drop it, ok, fine, here's the thing: Felps– Felps appeared and... resurrected me.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding, it has nothing to do with that, it has nothing to do with that, I'm… [Laughs] Oh, don't watch, because later you're going to clip this and put it on Twitter, it will be taken out of context, the whole world will think it's true– I'm kidding! I’m joking about the Felps business.
On the 24th, the QSMP event, we'll see how it goes, we’ll see what happen, ok?
[He reads chat and laughs] "You're crazy, bro" you guys are crazy too. Ay, ay...