#I'm never comfortable around the types of shows where 'difference' becomes the core conceit of the premise

[ferociouslycreativemystery]

Me: I'm fine about my autism now btw, like I've come to terms with my fixated interests, limited tolerances and social inabilities. The alienation it brings is not ideal but it's just a reality I've gotta deal with now that I know it's just a part of who I am. I mean, it's not like an awkward conversation is gonna ruin anyone's life, is it? We'll both move on from it eventually. This is fine!

Also me: physically unable to watch beyond the first word of the first question of The Assembly because oh my god what if someone says something awkward or controversial or someone can't make themselves understood people are gonna get mad and scream about it online and I will freeze up and be stuck in the backlash forever I don't know how to handle conflict AT ALL let's just hide in the corner behind the sofa instead wait what if I became a hermit actually yeah yeah yeah that sounds good let's do that

#unresolved trauma? never even heard of her haha 😅 #maddie debrief #that 2-minute intro/taster did nothing to calm me down either btw #I'm never comfortable around the types of shows where 'difference' becomes the core conceit of the premise #oh. so you've created a format dependent on making a socially alienated group face the social rules that made them alien in the first place #and then deriving your conflict from the 'natural contradiction' between the two? #sounds like the exact kind of conflict-seeking environment where I can let my normal guard down enough to meaningfully challenge #my deeply rooted feeling that people generally find me cumbersome to be around and mostly just tolerate my presence out of necessity #lovely that #(like i say I haven't seen the show #so idk if it is actually like that or if it's just the promo material stirring shit up as per usual #but as of rn I do not feel welcome in this room) #why does the 'we're not so different after all' always have to come at the climax and never the midpoint of the story? #why can we never find more than personal gratification in that realisation? #why do we always focus on the difficulty of coming to the realisation rather than the conflict of putting the realisation into *practice*? #I know why #it is because the human imagination is far more limited than we like to believe #and we find it hard to even *imagine* a world that we haven't seen functioning for ourselves yet #let alone find a purpose in *acting* on the idea #(especially if we ourselves currently feel dependent on the status quo for our personal welfare #which is why shows made to depend on 'difference = conflict' make my blood run cold) #so if we have to see to believe - how many cases of real world functioning equity does the average person understand? #very few. so let's instead lazily invert the state of power in an existing dynamic that people are familiar with #thereby reaffirming its false dichotomy through perpetuating what is essentially the same old conflict #while claiming to subvert it when in fact all we have done is reverse the dominance while keeping everyone locked in their roles #can someone just put some thought into how we might create a format that aims to loosen up the underlying skewed power dyanmic #so that everyone has to work together to prevent the elevation of a single way of being over all others #because that just becomes suffocating to *everyone* in the end #and that can still *acknowledge difference* but not as a source of conflict - rather as a source of collective strength? #but the story of changing one perspective will always be easier to both tell and enjoy than the one about building something new