Basically, my philosophy around disability fakers is: I would rather a thousand people fake a disability than have one disabled person suffer without care, aids, compassion, or any help.
In the books about Judaism I've been reading, there's a repeated emphasis on Jewish history being taught as something that happened not just in the past, but also to the people telling the stories in the present. The narrative is "it happened to us, to me" as opposed to "it happened to them."
This is something I've also noticed a lot in Native communities. They massacred us, they took our children, they banned our traditions, they forced us off our lands. There's no distancing ourselves from our ancestors, from the Native people of the past; their suffering is ours, their grief and pain and fear live in us.
I think this is a vitally important part of how certain groups interact with history; when your people are constant victims of extreme hate, of prejudice, of violence, you cannot afford to distance yourself from the past. The moment you do, you forget and you relax and you aren't prepared when that violence rears its head again. Because it will. If our history has taught us anything, it's that periods of quiet and "peace" (in the loosest sense of the word) for our people are the exception, they're temporary, and we need to remember that to survive.
I wish some aces would stop excluding other aces with complex sexual experiences. like I get why but you have to realize that being ace does not mean they don't enjoy sexual experiences and it's weird when you complain about allo people and boil it down to "people who have sexual experiences" and also shame people for their sex life and kinks as if your own community doesnt INCLUDE those people. because there are other aces out there who still masturbate, who feel sexually attracted to their own body, who barely experiences sexual attraction but still enjoys sex, who like consuming sexual media, who like sfw kink. being ace is so so much more complex than just "disliking sex". and also aromantic exclusionism in the same genre of posts is something i see a lot. especially aro allos. I hate hate hate seeing a community that SHOULD be inclusive boil down sexuality and exclude people.
i get that many aroaces experience their aromanticism and asexuality as connected in some way, but it's still important to acknowledge that "aroace" and "aro/ace" are not umbrella terms for the entire aspec community. as somebody whose aromanticism and allosexuality are inextricably intertwined and can't be fully separated from one another, you don't see me using "aroallo" for all aspecs - that clearly wouldn't be an accurate reflection of the whole community! "aspec" is a good term that includes all of us - please consider using it when referring to the general community.
i feel passionately about the need to enfold people experiencing (or diagnosed) with "just" depression or anxiety into the mad pride project. the more people who view themselves as mad, the better. much as the rhetorical move from "neurotypical" to "neuroconforming" emphasizes the artifice & social construction of "neurotypicality," so too will expanding identification as "mad" expose the sane/mad dichotomy as a false one.
it's true that (some) people with "just" depression and/or anxiety have an easier time navigating the psych system than people who have more stigmatized diagnoses. but this is not to say that they necessarily have an easy time — the carceral psych system is hostile to everyone subsumed by it, even the most "privileged" patients. we should of course critique & examine how our experiences are shaped by various intersections of privilege, but we cannot forget or ignore how someone with "just" a depression/anxiety diagnosis can still experience the full force of the carceral psych system brought down upon them (including but not limited to involuntary institutionalization, police intervention, & forced medication or other forced treatment).
we must encourage, if not insist, that those with the least-stigmatized diagnoses view their difficult experiences navigating the psych system as bound up with the liberation of people who have more stigmatized diagnoses &, often, a more violent experience of the psych system. we need more people to drop the "i have anxiety/depression but i'm not crazy" line and say loudly, "i have anxiety/depression & i am crazy. my access to just treatment is linked to the conditions of all other crazy people, who are my allies, peers, & friends. we are united in our cause & we all deserve a more liberating system of care."
zolu is maybe one of the easiest ships i've ever liked. they're dating, except when they're not, they're best friends even when they're kissing and they're still captain and first mate when they aren't. they hold hands, they hug. they have sex. they don't.
Luffy can hold Zoro's katanas and Zoro can hold Luffy's strawhat and no one bats an eye. one says "You're so cool!" and the other says "You're strong" and it's just another way to say "I see you, this is why I follow you/this is why I trust you". it's not seeing each other for a long time and still knowing how the other's steps sound like against wood and sand. the captain runs and the first mate follows. it's always "Zoro and the others" and "Where's Luffy?"
if they're just friends, if they're something more, if they don't have a label for it, at its core, it's just about how they get each other. they understand how the other's mind works. however you view them, it doesn't erase they fact that they love each other in a way they don't love other people.
Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.
And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s the enough of a reason for him to smile.
Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.
you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.
you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.
instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.
you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.
your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.
because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.
so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.
all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.
i love you testosterone i love you voice cracks i love you bass notes i love you loud laugh i love you fuzzy mustache i love you whispy patchy beard i love you bushy eyebrows i love you hairy stomach i love you knuckle and hand hair i love you boy smell i love you bottom growth i love you new orgasms i love you big nose i love you square jaw i love you squishy stomach i love you thighs that touch i love you stretch marks i love you acne i love you acne scars i love you body heat i love you appetite i love you mood stability i love you balanced hormone cycle i love you puberty awkwardness i love you uncertainty i love you adjustment i love you transformation i love you change i love you maturation i love you growth i love you freedom i love you euphoria i love you comfort i love you familiarity i love you recognition i love you second chances i love you masculinization i love you embodied manhood i love you testosterone
You know what's funny about this? Not only is it in reference to a post I made about Zionists who try to get to me... anonymously but also the fact that literally two messages before this I was accused of being hateful.
So let me repeat, there's nothing that screams hate more than Zionists and their rhetoric.
They say shit like this while they literally have the means to act on it given their entire culture is built on this type of violence, yet when they get cornered have the nerve to turn around and say "but Palestinians are hateful and want us all dead!"
I know for a fact the iof that pointed their rifles at me wanted to finish the job every time. And while I somehow survived, countless other Palestinians didn't. I know for a fact that had the iof finished the job, they would have rejoiced over my dead body like they do to all the Palestinians who do end up getting murdered. Had the iof finished the job with me, my body would probably still be in detention and not released to my family, similar to what is done to the many Palestinians who the iof kills whose families don't get to give them proper burial.
Zionists are sadistic and vile, and this is a quick reminder in case anyone was still on the fence about it.
Works from the assumption that I know so much more than you, and you could simply never comprehend This Topic on your own, so I must explain it to you, for I am so wise.
Neurodivergent Over-Clarifying: thinks the problem is me
Works from the assumption that I am a trainwreck and am doing a terrible job of expressing myself, so I must continue to explain what I meant, hoping to successfully convey the thought in my head.
for once there is a Kai rotating in my head and the result is a sizzling hot take
That being: Kai gives me more aroace vibes than Lloyd. There's something about Kai "liking" skylor and then not only never getting her number but it is implied he ghosted her LOL. He acts like a player but also has no game. It reminds me of when I was in elementary school and would pick a boy to "like" because I thought that's just how it works. So he does it to fit in to make up for basically not having a normal childhood. Essentially trying to act what he imagines a teenager is supposed to be like
And While I have headcanoned Lloyd as aroace spec, the more I think about it the more I realize he has shown more romantic interest in someone than like half of the ninja lol. Look at it how you want but the oni trilogy is pretty loud that Lloyd has a crush at least and it sorely affected him
I see it as Lloyd had the textbook definition allo people have told me when I ask what a crush is like lmaoo and simultaneously something I can't relate to as someone who is aroace myself
If you compare Kai's romantic situation with Lloyd and even Zane, they both have shown more romantic interest in a character than he has. which is ironic because Kai is the playboy and Lloyd n Zane are the aroace characters in fanon, despite canon
This kinda fuels my opinion that the fanon view of Lloyd and Zane being aro ace specifically is based on stereotypes of aromantic and asexual people rather than taking a dive at how the characters behave in the show. That is a whole other conversation tho lol