@izzyizumi / izzyizumi.tumblr.com
Un-normalize having to apologize for not getting the joke. Eradicate having to insult your own intelligence just because you find someone else to be unclear. You have nothing to be sorry for. You’ve done nothing wrong. People who call you dumb or mock you, or even just expect you to apologize for the way your brain works, are ableist shits who don’t deserve you.
[image description: an image of Change My Mind meme. The caption has been edited to read: Literature studies and fandom culture are, at their core, the same thing. You can’t change my mind. end of description.]
My therapist just told me my problem is that I need to write more fanfiction.
This sounds fake but the logic behind it is actually really interesting? She said obsession with a new fandom triggers quick dopamine release when we consume all this related content--it's easy and addictive.
What we're NOT getting is that 'slow dopamine' that's more sustainable and engaging. That's the kind we get from DOING things that take effort but are ultimately rewarding.
So like, she suggested that writing fic and making fanart are ways to balance the quick dopamine of watching a show/reading fic with the slow dopamine of working at something that takes effort.
Moral of the story is you should engage in the process of creation around your favorite things. You'll feel better for it.
Oh.
OH.
Instead of making fun of people who do things at an older age that are normally done younger ( like getting their diploma or GED, learning to drive, even learning to read ) how about you:
true or false, everyone should be making their best effort 100% of the time, it’s lazy to do otherwise.
excellent! now true or false: leisure time is only valuable if you spend it productively. if you are not creating something or enriching yourself, you are just wasting time.
terrific work!
so logically, you can stop feeling guilty about “wasting” time on “useless” things, because it’s neither wasteful nor useless if you enjoy it.
no!!!! no that is not the message you are supposed to take from this! Bad tumblr!!!!
Since I just saw a post on this and since I work in food service now:
Guys, being a regular and ordering the same thing every time you come in is absolutely fine.
Literally no one is going to be side-eyeing you. The fact of the matter is we have other stuff going on.
That’s not a put-down or anything. I try to make sure all the customers who interact with me feel like they’re our most important customer. However, we are busy and often people just sort of slip by unnoticed.
When I do think about regulars that come into the store, it’s not usually: “Oh my God, I can’t believe they come to Panera every day. Yikes, so cringe.” It’s usually: “I wonder how John is doing. I hope his coffee was alright. I had to get it in a bit of a rush today because of all the to-go orders.”
And I really want to scream this from the rooftops because I had a guy just a couple of weeks ago say how embarrassed he felt for always ordering the same thing. That he felt ashamed of being so predictable. Meanwhile, I’m just glad he didn’t order something we don’t have (looking at you Panera wraps) and that he’s not yelling at me.
You know what’s cringe? Getting snippy with Panera employees because we don’t have the thing you wanted. You know what’s cringe? Complaining about the prices to me when I can’t afford to eat at this restaurant without the associate’s discount. You know what’s cringe? Yelling at Panera employees because you’ve had a bad day and they made the mistake of working in retail.
That’s cringe. Eating the same sandwich every day? Not a problem. If you get noticed for it at all, it will be: “Oh, thank God, I know what to do with this one and have a low probability of getting yelled at.” Most of the time though, it’ll be the barista trying to remember everything you ordered, double checking the receipt to make sure they got it right, and then handing you the order before moving on to the next one. Because, let’s face it, you’re the twenty-sixth person to order a bagel with plain cream cheese this shift and the orders start blurring together after about the fifth one.
the notes of this post are absolute comedy gold
Im going to miss the way i used to eat gently and trustingly from the waitstaffs cupped hands.
If you ever feel like you don't contribute to fandom because you "only" comment—
A regular serial commenter just joined a fandom Discord server I'm on and people are coming out of the woodwork to thank her for her service to the fandom, expressing how much joy her comments on their works bring them.
Remember—they're never only comments.
If you're a reader who gets nervous about leaving comments, please take a moment to read the notes on this post. The tags alone have been giving me life for the past week, and it's honestly lovely.
Accessibility is talked about like it’s only something disabled people need, like it’s an inconvenience or it’s something that goes above and beyond what the average person would expect. But abled people get their accessibility needs met without a thought. They get lights bright enough to see by, stairs, doors wide enough to fit through, chairs at the level they like, and all sorts of other things that are tailor-made just for them.
Abled people do have accessibility needs. The only difference is that abled people are granted access automatically and disabled people have to fight for that same privilege.
Whenever I take a long car ride I end up exhausted afterwards, and I'm always like "why am I so tired? I was just sitting around doing nothing all day."
But the answer, it turns out, is I was doing something. Riding in a car jars your body in many directions and requires constant microadjustments of your muscles just to stay in place and hold your normal posture. Because you're inside the car, inside the situation, it's easy not to notice all the extra work you're doing just to maintain the status quo.
There's all sorts of type of work that we think of as "free" that require spending energy: concentrating, making decisions, managing anxiety, maintaining hypervigilance in an unfriendly environment, dealing with stereotype threat, processing a lot of sensory input, repairing skin cells damaged sun exposure, trying to stay warm in a cold room.
The next time you think you're tired from "nothing", consider instead that you're probably in situation where you're doing a lot of unnoticed extra work just to stay in place.
opening my body's task manager to see what's taking up all my cpu
I sometimes see takes going around that infantilization isn’t “that bad” or isn’t actually oppressive. So, let’s clear something up.
Whether it’s applied to women, trans men, disabled people, or another group or person, infantilization is inherently a delegitimization of autonomy.
“This person is childlike.” is inherently tied up in “This person is unfit to look after themselves and make choices for themselves, and needs an authority over them caring for them. We wouldn’t want them hurting themselves, would we?”
Infantilization itself may look harmless, but it directly and immediately leads into stripping infantilized people of their agency and independence under the guise of false concern for their wellbeing.
Infantilization is particularly an issue when it comes to medicine and medical consent. It can lead to the infantilized person being forced to jump through hoops to prove that they are competent enough to direct their own care, or, in defeat, to go and find someone that will be listened to on their behalf.
Infantilization is not something to be dismissed with “At least they care.” and “They’re just trying to do the right thing.” When you say these things, you are contributing to infantilization, because you are implying legitimacy of the “concerns” of infantilizers at the expense of those who have experienced it.
I wish disability positivity was less about preaching "you can do anything you put your mind to if you work hard" and more about telling disabled people "what you can do right now matters even when it's less than or different from what society expects."
finding it more and more difficult to keep a baseline level of respect for people who think "lived with parents after 18" and "can't drive" are legit insults/ acceptable jokes to make about anyone
When my mom started to go blind, she kept driving well past the point of safety because of the idea that “people who can’t drive are pathetic.” And her brother can’t drive! He’s mentally disabled! But to her, he had a reason and she didn’t. Many times after she had to stop driving she told me that losing the ability to drive was one of the hardest parts of going blind—and she didn’t even like driving. It was just the “being pathetic and helpless” part that bothered her. And my mom was a lot of things, and some weren’t very nice, but let’s all ask: did a lady in her 50s, stricken with a mystery illness that took her sight, deserve to feel even worse about herself because “not being able to drive is pathetic”?
This “joke” harms people. Full stop.
honestly this story goes so much further than just a joke being harmful. the joke is only a symptom of the larger issue of ableism. people are so scared to be seen as disabled or ‘unable to take care of themself’ in any way.
Something important to keep in mind;
Empathy = You know what a person is feeling. If you see someone stuck outside in the cold you can imagine how terrible that must be and how much it would suck to be in that situation. Maybe you were once stuck in the cold yourself and can draw on that experience.
Sympathy = You don't know what a person is feeling but you believe them when they tell you. Maybe you've never been stuck out in the cold before and can't imagine what it's like, but when they explain how much it sucks you accept that they are suffering. You believe that they are having a bad time even if what they're going through isn't something you yourself can understand.
Compassion = Regardless of how you know, be it through empathy, sympathy or otherwise, you are aware that the person in front of you is cold. Acting on this information, you give them a blanket and direct them somewhere warm.
The presence of empathy does not make someone a good person, and the lack of empathy does not make someone bad.
Empathetic people can still be cruel; being able to tell at a glance that someone is suffering doesn't stop an empathetic person from deciding that the victim must deserve it.
Unempathetic people can still be kind; being unable to tell that someone is suffering doesn't prevent them from trying to help, and it doesn't prevent them from saying, "wow, that sucks. I'm sorry you're having a bad time."
Empathy has no bearing on a person's ability to love and care for others, and it should not be a method of judging whether someone is safe or not.
People without empathy are not our enemies. They are not “evil.” They are not monsters. A person is not bad simply for what they are, themselves, innately; or for how they have been changed in ways that are outside their control. A person is not bad because they lack an emotion, even if to most of us that emotion is common, even when it may be hard to understand not having it.
The truth of the matter is that having no empathy doesn’t make someone bad any more than having it makes someone good. Empathy is not the source or the hinge of humanity, of legitimacy, or of personhood. It is not what determines who has value or how much. It is just an emotional experience, one that some people have and some people don’t. Each state of being has its advantages and its drawbacks. Ultimately what matters is how a person chooses to behave. Actions, and intent, are what make a person good or bad, or somewhere in between.
Without empathy is simply another way of being. It is not a determinant of a person’s character. It does not make them lesser. We who experience it are not better than them. We are not more deserving. We are not more real. It is a grave mistake to otherize low-empathy people, to stereotype or decry or mistreat them. And it is a mistake to assume all empathetic feelings are healthy, all empathetic actions are good, and that all disempathetic feelings and actions must be toxic and bad.
The dehumanization of neurodivergence is a base discrimination, and those who engage in it ARE making their decisions based on prejudice, on unfair bias, and on a terrible misunderstanding of what it means to be good.
“Not all a-specs are socially awkward.”
“A-specs aren’t cold or unfeeling.”
“A-specs aren’t disabled.”
We read these things over and over in articles and resources aimed at allo folks. The first one isn’t untrue. The second one glosses over those of us who are cold or aloof, or perceived to be so and are thus insecure about it. The third one flat out ignores disabled a-specs, who do, in fact, exist.
I understand the desire to dispel stereotypes about our community, I really do. Stereotypes are bad. I get it. However, our response to that shouldn’t be throwing members of our community under the bus. This should be enough of an argument for our community to stop doing this.
It’s easy to switch from “not all a-specs are socially awkward” to “some a-specs are socially awkward; some aren’t.” We can add a little line like “just like allo people!” after that for good measure.
