a single spaghetti noodle on the kitchen floor

more doodles bc lou really hurt my feelings

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

Fun fact, that was literally what inspired me to make this post!

I know folks have been sharing this link on other posts, but &udm=14 works well:

You can add it as an extension to Firefox now: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/udm14/reviews/

born to infodump forced to constantly worry if the other person actually cares or if im making sense or if i said something wrong or if im embarrassing myself or if they want me to stop talking or

aang’s first sweet tats

#if you’ve never gotten a tattoo before just know that this would hurt like a motherfucker#esp on like the thighs and backs of his arms baby boy you were like fucking eleven years old this leaves me SHOOK#like i have a VERY high pain tolerance and my tattoo was nothing but like it WAS in a very sensitive place and trust me the amount of TIME#he would have to sit there for HOURS AND HOURS#like they dont even have electric needles they’re basically doing FILLED stick n poke wtf wtf wtf#i mean its incredible but i just dont think we talk enough about how fucking cool and badass and also PAINFUL this would have been for aang#no wonder he’s so proud of them tbh like-#my son#best boy  (via @sokkaseboyhair)

I never thought about the fact that Aang having tattoos meant he was a small child who got poked with needles thousands of times but damn

And, they are major tattoos that don’t distort as he grows, which is also cool.

guillermo del toro’s pinocchio is a beautiful film but my god no one has adapted that story like neverafter. you can never look at it the same way again after listening to lou wilson, a black man, explaining that he chose to play as pinocchio because it’s a story about a little boy who isn’t allowed to make mistakes. that in pinocchio's story, he is fundamentally barred from childhood at once upon a time. he must earn something that everyone else is granted from birth. the other boys get to tell lies and play and get into trouble, but when pinocchio does the same thing there are grave and violent consequences. his pinocchio is trying to understand why the world is so unfair, why the rules are so different for him, why everyone else gets to be a real boy.

and I think about it every day.

character assassination

So. How about this season so far

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

I don't think I've ever met a disabled person who didn't have the idea of themselves as an abled person haunting them. That is the yardstick by which our many of our successes are measured, and our failures pitied.

It's great that you achieved that! If only you didn't have your disability holding you back, imagine what you could do!

It's too bad that you weren't able to do it. If you didn't have your disability, you may have been able to.

You start doing it yourself, too, comparing everything that you can do to what you could have done if you just didn't weren't disabled. Seeing yourself as an inferior version of yourself.

But we aren't inferior versions of ourselves. We are the only us who exists. There is not an abled version of us waiting to outshine us. We should not have to live in the shadow of someone who doesn't exist.

here's the thing. "ace people can still have sex" and "aro people can still be in relationships" are objectively true statements. this is because people can do whatever the fuck they want forever regardless of their label/orientation. however some of you have GOT to get your shit together and stop using those statements to undermine larger conversations about aspec identity. following up "ace people don't owe you sex in a relationship" with "ace people can still have sex in a relationship though!" is not fucking helpful! yes it's true. yes it's a reality for many people. however if we used our fucking brains for a second and thought about how following up "people don't have to conform to societal expectation" with "but people can still conform!! don't worry they can still conform!!!!" is counterproductive and very frustrating for a lot of people then we could get back to the actual point which is not "aspec people can still have sex/be in relationships" but "aspec people can do whatever they want with their relationships and their bodies". which they can, by the way. they can do whatever they want forever. and you should give them 200 dollars every time you see them for dealing with this shit

Hope yall don't mind me putting this here because these tags put things super succinctly:

Tags from @faebriel and @relentlessenthusiasmforthebard (if you want me to remove the screenshots, I will)

Speaking as a romance-indifferent aro who is in a romantic relationship: I am so, so tired of people using "aros can still date" as a way of 'reassuring' people, or as an excuse to erase or invalidate aromantic people.

No! Plenty of aros cannot comfortably date! The respect shown towards aro people should not hinge upon our attitudes towards romance. Value and validity is not defined by a person's participation in romance, nor any desire to do so.

And I'm mainly focusing on aros here because I'm not ace, but this applies to aces too in regards to sex. So many sex-repulsed/averse aces experience their boundaries being disregarded, or their identity being disrespected, because "aces can have sex though?"

The focus of a-spec activism should involve being pro-consent, being pro-autonomy, being respectful of boundaries, and dismantling amatonormative/bigoted/exclusionary systems and ideas. But it feels like the only "activism" some people care about is assuring the majority that we can conform.

you ever feel like you were born with something rotten inside you and if people get close enough they’re gonna find out

(via @bijoumikhawal )

chameleon chameleon

... the second part of a personal essay i wrote about being bigender. this time, about being bigender and transitioning. thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed part one!

All useful things turn to shit when you privatize them.

Basically, any politician talking about privatization of any public service should be taken as a glowing neon sign reading “I’M CORRUPT AND I WANT TO MAKE MY CRONIES RICHER AT YOUR EXPENSE”

“In order to improve performance and lighten the load on the public coffers, I propose to privatize-” [gunshot]

This is gonna be a very American-centric rant, sorry, but any politician who says that government should be run “more like a business” should be immediately barred from serving in public office, because they’re either an idiot who doesn’t know how government works or they’re a grifter who is planning on ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of public infrastructure and selling it to their rich friends. Possibly both. Probably both.

Governments are not businesses. A business’s number one goal is to make a profit. That’s it. A government’s role is, ideally, to collect an amount of resources that its citizens collectively decided was fair, then use those resources (usually taxes) to provide services the People decided was necessary. Water, roads, electricity, busses, trains, libraries, education, and (if you’re not American) medical care.

Public services are exactly that: a service. Their sole mission is to provide said service to the public. Full stop. Profit isn’t a factor because their goal (ideally) isn’t to make money, it’s simply to provide the service for which they were created.

The post office is not a business. The library is not a business. Public transportation is not a business. K-12 schools are not a business. Any money you pay them outside what is given to them by taxes is to help cover costs. That’s why using the printers at a public library is cheaper than printing the same amount of pages at a for-profit print-shop. It’s why there are some places in the United States, such as communities in Alaska, where private companies like DHL, UPS, and Fedex simply refuse to make deliveries because it makes zero business sense to ship parcels at great expense to isolated, low-population areas.

The Post Office however, has a Constitution Mandate that every American is entitled to mail service. It is, in the parlance of conservatives, a God-Given Right. Thus, they are the only ones that deliver things out to those isolated communities. When you take profit motive out of the equation and focus purely on the service it was created to provide, you have a system that is built to work for everyone.

Are these institutions perfect? No, of course not. They’re large, bulky, aged, bureaucratic behemoths that are constantly underfunded and are making due with the bare minimum of resources to stay functional.

There’s a reason that the United States Postal Service for years has been actively sabotaged by conservatives who had a financial interest in private package carrier companies and are hostile to the idea of mail-in voting. There’s a reason that libraries and schools for years have been struggling for funding, and why they’re now targets of “culture war” fanatics who think privately run but tax-funded schools should teach kids more about Jesus and librarians offering free books to children is “grooming”

There’s a reason Americans pay the most for healthcare but have some of the worst healthcare outcomes of any western country.

School cafeteria workers used to be unionized, directly-hired employees of a school district. My best friend’s mom raised three kids and could afford a house on the salary she used to make doing that job. Now most cafeteria workers are contractors that get paid much less to do the same work, serving lower-quality food. Your taxes still pay for it, but their employer - the private third-party service company - is the one pocketing the difference. Janitors and cleaning staff are also a heavily “outsourced” occupation.

Taxation is theft? No, taking public infrastructure that was built by unionized employees and paid for by public tax revenue only to sell it off to private corporations so they do a shittier job, pay the workers less, and charge us all more for the privilege is fucking theft.

“Just run it like a business,” says the businessman who didn’t build it, never used it, doesn’t depend on it, and will make money from dismantling and selling it.