monsteraanathema

[monsteraanathema]

i'm such a fucking menace today

[monsteraanathema]

:D

this is what happens when a little fronts 🥴

[monsteraanathema]

i'm a fucking plant and i'm unstoppable

[monsteraanathema]

I ATE A REALLY BIG MANGO A COUPLE NIGHTS AGO

[monsteraanathema]

The problem with being autistic is that you tell people you are autistic and they are all supportive, but then you show actual signs of autism and suddenly they get super irritated. What did you expect? That it's an fancy accessoir to make me more interesting? I'm disabled, bitches

[monsteraanathema]

shout out to the people who DO look autistic

to the people who have different facial features from autism or conditions that often occur with autism

to the people who need padded equipment, gait trainers, or other highly noticeable aids

to the people who are ignored in favor of talking to their parents/guardians/carers

to the people who have been told they shouldn’t be seen in public because of their autism

to the people who are told they don’t exist by low support needs autistics

there is a place for you in the autistic community <3 [heart]

[monsteraanathema]

Having Plushies is Normal, Don't Let Anyone Say it's Not

As someone who has lots of plushies in her bed, and plushies attached to her backbag, it should be normal to have plushie and still cuddle with them.

Even my other friend had lots of plushies in her bed while she was past the age of having plushies, and so did i. I still have plushies in my bed, even my old kitty plushie from back when i was young. It really comforted me and made me feel so not alone, especially during thunderstorms.

So, let me tell you this, Plushies work and they work fine. It should be really normal to have plushies past the age of childhood and well into your adulthood, i tell you this as a teenager with autism that it is fine.

Stuffed animals comfort you? Good, use them. They are so cute and won't harm anyone, despite what haters may tell you on the streets. They work for you and they can work for anyone else as well, don't let haters keep you.

[monsteraanathema]

A non-exhaustive list of the ways autistic people may show empathy even though we are assumed to not have it.

Are these exclusive to autistic people? No, not at all, we're just more often pathologized for them.

If I'm in a relationship with someone who does this, does that mean I just have to suck it up even if it doesn't work for me? No, it doesn't, but you do probably have some adjusting to do. You'll need to treat it as a mutual miscommunication instead of something it's all on the autistic (or ADHD, or whatever) person to fix. You'll have to change some of your expectations and get comfortable asking for (and explaining) the show of empathy you need - and you may even find out that the way you show empathy isn't working so great for them either. 😉

[Image description: AUTISTIC EMPATHY CAN LOOK LIKE… - Infographic by Autball.

White translucent boxes with black lettering inside on a magenta to purple diagonal gradient. The first four boxes read: (1) I’ve been through something similar, so maybe sharing my story will help; (2) Ooh, I know how to fix that! Maybe helping them solve their problem will make them feel better; (3) Oh man, now I have big feelings too! I just feel this so much!; (4) My favorite thing always calms me down, so maybe it’ll help them too. I’ll ask them to do it with me. These four are grouped together with a blue line and labeled: Misinterpreted as “Making it All About You.”

The next four boxes read: (5) I’m not sure how to help, so I’ll leave it to that person who looks like they do; (6) When I’m upset or overwhelmed, I prefer to be left alone, so I’ll bet they would like the same; (7) If I get involved, I’m gonna become overwhelmed myself, and that will take attention from them, so it’s best to just stay out of it; (8) I’m not sure how to help, and I usually make it worse when I try but get it wrong, so it’ll be better for everyone if I just do nothing. These four are grouped together with a blue line and labeled: Misinterpreted as Cold and Uncaring.

At the bottom is one last sentence, in white bold lettering, that reads, “Just because we don’t show it the same doesn’t mean we don’t feel it.”]

[monsteraanathema]

Apparently this needs to be said so

Forgetting things is morally neutral! Memory issues are morally neutral!

You're not a bad person if you...

forget things quickly

forget people

can't remember entire stages of your life

can't remember important things

can remember some things very well and forget other things all the time

can't remember things (or anything!) about your interests

forget to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, etc

forget to reply to texts

remember things and immediately forget them again

can't remember birthdays, events, etc

frequently answer 'I forgot' to questions

can't retain new information

forget things you used to know

only remember things when it's too late

have vague, distorted and/or unreliable memories

depend on others to know how an event you were in played out

have other symptoms that are worsened by memory issues and vice versa

... and anything else I might have missed!

[monsteraanathema]

Me: covers my ears and rocks back and forth so I don’t have a meltdown My mother: stop it you look like a special needs kid Me: glares in autism

[monsteraanathema]

[id: a dark purple background with stars userbox with a pastel purple border and pastel purple text that reads “this user feels mentally lost in space.” on the left is an image of a purple and pink galaxy. /end id]

[monsteraanathema]

“magic isnt real” — plants just grow out of the ground. for free. everywhere.

[monsteraanathema]

one time my grandma was drawing a horse and i got in trouble for saying "that's a weird horse" and (because the ears were big) "it looks like a bunny". because that's super duper rude and mean apparently. i was 4.

#autistic

[monsteraanathema]

I'm sure everyone feels like this to a degree about whatever postsecondary education or career specialty or particular interest they have but like. I do think the world would be better if everyone just took like. Linguistics 101 in high school or otherwise had exposure to some of the basic concepts. Like imagine if we all just had a baseline understanding of stuff like

all dialects as equally valid forms of a language and the fact that whatever dialect is "standard" has lots to do with history and culture and nothing to do with functionality of language

linguistic descriptivism and prescriptivism in general

language change in general (and how it's inevitable. and morally neutral. and not degradation)

languages interacting and influencing each other (and how one language borrowing a word from another language and having it mean something different is normal. and morally neutral)

and you know what? actually just grammar. how sentence structures actually work. sure wasted a lot of time in high school english class that could have been spent on something useful for once

I need people to THINK for once about how so much of our disagreements involve just stuff about what certain words mean and how they are used. So often we are just unaware of how ideas are all packaged in words and how that's affecting our thought processes and communication and idk. I just think we could benefit from slowing down sometimes and being like "hmm I wonder what this conversation might be like if the language around these ideas worked differently. Would we even be having the same argument?"

I won't go on forever but I think linguistics is incredibly relevant to everyone everywhere since. you know. we are living our entire lives steeped in language all the time. But instead it's just like this weird little subject for people who are nerds but don't care enough about making money??

And meanwhile everyone's wasting so much energy being the language police or judging people for speaking differently or worried about how the next generation is ruining language once and for all. We're all thinking about language all the time anyway! So much of it's just in a way that's so so counterproductive! Imagine if we could channel that better!

[monsteraanathema]

Does your post about wasps and beetles and moths also include guinea worms? Or are we still ok to eradicate those? They evolved specifically to only reproduce by causing painful lesions on human feet, though we've put enough selection pressure on them that they now infect dogs and cats as well.

They are not a major food source for any organism that we know of. They are not a keystone species of any ecosystem. Do they have intrinsic value, so that we should let them live to keep infecting people without access to clean water? They aren't doing anything for the ecosystem.

This is the kind of topic biologists with PhDs spend years writing research papers about, and I don't see you offering any grant money.

Also, I'm not sure if the blog was enough of a clue, but I specialize in Accipitriformes. I'm a really weird person to ask this to. You'd probably be better served asking @bogleech or someone similar.

Final aside... the original post specified pollinators so uh. No? I guess? It would not include this apparently non-pollinator species. No comment on whether I would personally choose to wipe it out because I don't have a god complex, but the post was about an entirely different taxonomic field.

[monsteraanathema]

You meet god and she's mostly dead fish. You ask her why and she says most of the world is dead fish, and she's made herself to appeal to the most common denominator, the everyman funnyman comedy show that runs for eleven seasons but with the entire universe in mind. You ask her how much of the dead fish is your fault, she says it's far less than you'd think, in the grand scheme of things. You ask her if you matter at all. If you can do anything. She shrugs her rotting shoulders and says mattering is a made-up concept, like life, but sure, you can matter if you want to, on some scale. She has many scales. She doesn't know what you mean by 'anything', but you can do everything you can. You ask her if it's enough. She says there's no base requirement for deserving to exist. She's smoking a joint and the smoke filtering out of her gills gathers and forms gas giants and red dwarfs. You ask her if there's any hidden secrets of the universe you should know and she says it's not a secret if she tells, plus it's fun to let you figure it out yourself. You ask her if any of your questions were right questions and she says you worry about being right so much it might keep you from fucking around, which is as close to meaning of life as she ever bothered to make. You don't ask but she says she loves your hair, also your whole being, also your planet. She says she figured out what love is yesterday and is trying it out, which explains the ten thousand rainbows and sudden influx in rains of fish. She offers you a drag of her joint and you wake up half past midnight behind a chain restaurant clutching a smoked salmon. The new stars are winking like they're in on some joke and you're sure if you try hard enough you'll remember what it is.

[monsteraanathema]

oh? the person with “struggles to relate to others” disorder didn’t express themselves in exactly the way you’d like? shocking. alarming, even. think more generously, bitch