we’re gonna have an entire generation of ppl who know what “biome” means bc of minecraft
new generational divide: people who learned about biomes from zoo tycoon vs people who learned about biomes from minecraft
i learned it from science class because i’m not a fucking gamer
i know this is a joke post but minecraft has been used as an educational tool and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was used to teach ecology
now we need minecraft to teach kids how to defeat capitalism
sword
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My cousin’s showing me a mockumentarh movie called ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ about a group of vampires in NZ, Taika Waititi is one of the vampires, it’s like 2 mins in and I love it
The vampires are flatmates and are arguing about no one washing the bloody dishes
“I’m embarrassed when I bring people over!”
“What does it matter, you bring them over you kill them!”
“The other day, I was dragging a body across the floor, I noticed, not much dust.”
“…”
“I kind of swept?”
“She (girl he fell in love with) gave me this (locket) before she left. She told me it is pure silver.”
….
“Unfortunately, we vampires, cannot wear silver.”
*cuts to Taika wearing the locket, his chest smoking*
*talking about drinking virgin blood*
“I like to think of it like this. I think you would enjoy a sandwich more if you knew no one had fucked it.”
“What are we?”
Group as one: “werewolves not swearwolves”
“You led a vampire hunter into our house?!”
“I just gave him my email!”
“His soul is in hell.”
“I don’t care where his soul is, where’s his blanket?”
“Leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet!”
“Bidding, what bidding?”
“…I am bidding on a table.”
So, it’s Autism Acceptance Month, and April 2nd! This year I actually wanted to talk about my experiences as an autistic person
I’ve seen there’s a sort of month-long thing and I’d like to try it, even if I’m late! Days 1 + 2 of 30 Days Of Autism Acceptance under the cut, ‘cause it’ll likely be pretty long.
Day 1: Introduction
Hi! I’m Ruby, and I’m 18. I was professionally diagnosed as autistic at age 15, and everything kinda… Clicked into place. I’m not the best at introductions, so… Moving on!
Day 2: What I Love About Being Autistic Is…
Oh! There’s so much to love. I could never list everything, we’d be here until, like… September. Like, have you ever tried a new dessert and discovered a completely new level of sensory heaven, or combined your favorite stims with your current special interest? For me it’s singing, so I really like singing things I associate with my special interests. Seriously! There are things that aren’t so great about being autistic too, obviously, but I love being the way I am! And, since I spent so much of my life thus far undiagnosed, I really like having explanations for why I exist the way I do.
Since Autism Awareness Month is coming up, here’s what you should know
Many autistic people prefer to call it “Autism Acceptance Month”: Awareness and acceptance are two very different things. You could be aware of autism, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to accept and understand it
Autism Speaks is hated by most autistic people: Ask most autistic people what they think of Autism Speaks, and they’ll tell you it’s awful. Autism Speaks seems intent on finding a cure, and is awful when it comes to their treatment of autistic people, treating autism like a monster that destroys families
Many autistic people don’t want a cure: Sure, there’s some that do, but there’s a lot that don’t. And they would prefer more understanding of autism than a cure for it
Don’t light it up blue, go #RedInstead: Lighting up blue is often associated with Autism Speaks, many autistic people would prefer you to light up red instead
If you’re a neurotypical relative, don’t make it all about yourself: So many “Autism Parents” out there make posts taking about how hard autism is for them, without seemingly giving much thought to their child, and they get angry when autistic people correct them. Yes, autism can be tough, but I can guarantee that it’s going to be a lot more difficult for them, especially if you refuse to understand and listen to us
Listen to autistic people: This one should be obvious, but so many people don’t do this. Sometimes autistic people get told they’re “not autistic enough” or “not that autistic” when they’re trying to talk about their own experiences. If you want to understand autism, we’re the best people to come to
Be careful about the autism information you share online, check the facts: Whilst Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month should be a good thing, many autistic people don’t like it because it’s also the chance for more misinformation and lies to be spread about autism. Don’t always believe what you read, check for evidence to prove the facts to be true
Anyone else tired of the 3 guy 1 girl character setup in literally every movie ever?
It’s because at roughly that ratio is where men feel that men and women are represented equally.
There was a study done and when there was 1:1 male/female the male audiences felt as though there were
moretoo many women. In general the men studied perceived things like 3 guys to 1 girl as more representative of the world.That disgusts me.
There have also been studies in which it was found that men think women talk much more than they actually do – if they have to share equal air time with a woman they think they’re not getting a word in edgewise.
Imagine being so used to privilege and prioritization to think that the equal treatment of others is an unfairness to you.
Autism doesn’t ruin our lives. Having people refuse to accommodate our needs and people deciding to abuse us just because we are autistic ruins our lives.
When we are treated with respect and our needs are listened to and accommodated just as much as the needs of nonautistic people are accommodated, our lives are just as full, happy, and fulfilled as anyone else’s.
We are full, complex, autonomous human beings with our own needs and desires, thoughts and opinions and choices to make, and we can have wonderful lives when the people around us treat us with respect and care.
April is Autism Awareness Month, launched by Autism Speaks, an organization masquerading as a charity that has harmed autistic people and spread misinformation about autism for the last 10 years. Instead of supporting Autism Speaks and their campaigns, take some time out of April 2016 to educate yourself on why you shouldn’t support Autism Speaks and spread the word.
- A Masterpost About The Problems With Autism Speaks by @thecaffienatedautistic
This is a serious genuine question: why are autistic people against finding a cure for it? I understand if they personally don’t want it to be cured, but why do they feel they don’t want a cure at all for anyone? Thanks!
When people talk about curing autism they seem to have the idea that autistic people are basically ‘neurotypical’ people who HAVE autism (they view it as something separate that they’d like to remove to make us ‘normal’). But autism isn’t a separate thing that’s been ‘added on’, or an illness. It’s just the way we are.
People also often seem to assume that anything negative we experience is because of autism, and anything positive we experience is despite autism. If you’re autistic, everything you experience is basically filtered through your ‘autisticness’, if that makes sense. So if you were to magic away that autisticness, it wouldn’t just remove negative things, and because autism is complex there can be traits that have both positives and negatives (for example, sensory issues: some sensory input might bring massive amounts of joy and feel really amazing, but then some sensory input might cause lots of pain and make you feel ill – sometimes I’ve thought I’d be happier with more normal sensory reactions to things, but ultimately I like the good feelings and I’d rather put up with the bad (and be able to try to find coping mechanisms to deal with the bad) rather than miss out on all the good).
Autism is inherent. You can’t remove it/cure it. So it also seems a waste for people to focus so much on that instead of focusing on our current wellbeing. Also, the knowledge that people do so desperately want to basically get rid of us (as we are) is obviously very unpleasant!
The idea that there should be a cure suggests that there is something wrong with us, and makes it very clear just how strongly a lot of non-autistic people feel about that. So even if there was a cure and we would (genuinely) have a choice as to whether we received it or not, it’s still not really pleasant to be told that you are something that needs curing, that there’s something so wrong with you that there should be a cure for it whether you want one or not. A lot of our difficulties would be somewhat diminished if we received adequate support (which most of us don’t – probably because all the resources that would go towards providing support are being spent on trying to find cures).
Realistically, if there was a cure, it’s likely that autistic people often wouldn’t get a choice. Parents would choose to cure their children (and that would include dependent adult children). Adults who were able to reject a cure would probably still get a lot of pressure to accept a cure (by family, doctors, possibly even other people like employers or colleagues who all just think that, “Life would be so much easier, why wouldn’t you want to be cured of something as terrible as autism?”) which would either result in people unwillingly ‘consenting’ to a cure, or would just cause lots of autistic people to live pretty miserable lives constantly being told how much better they’d be if they were just… not the way they are… and how much more wanted they’d be if they weren’t autistic… and likely that they’re not deserving of support because they could have ‘fixed themselves’. Thing is, we’re not broken. Having difficulties, even significant ones, doesn’t make us broken versions of real people. We’re real, we’re here already, and we could have really great lives and opportunities if people actually took the time to learn more about us and to embrace our differences.
As touched on above, if there was a cure, those of us who didn’t want to be cured would probably lose access any support we do already have. Why put money/resources into supporting autistic people if there’s a cure that makes that support redundant? Why would anyone (particularly those who thinks autism should be cured) support people who haven’t chosen to cure themselves?
The people who want to cure autism also want to find ways to prevent it, and lots of autistic people fear that if it was possible to screen for autism in the same way that people can screen for other conditions before birth, people would decide to terminate a pregnancy if they’d been told that their child was likely to be autistic. Basically, if you’re autistic, you’re constantly being warned that you don’t really deserve to exist. We are constantly trying to fight against that, trying to explain our experiences to people and trying to convince people that we are worthwhile human beings as we are, but the damage that’s already been done (by companies like Autism Speaks, and people like Andrew Wakefield) is really hard to undo. So I think most of us would expect that, if cures or preventative measures were possible, there would eventually no longer be any autistic people. And the ones who slipped through that ‘net’ would still suffer because the world would be even less inclined to want to support autistic people/there’d be less autistic people around to make them feel less alone.
Even the idea that autistic people can be cured is dangerous. That rhetoric is linked to fear-mongering, and the idea that autism should be hated and eradicated. Lots of children have dangerous ‘treatments’ forced on them, and are basically abused under the guise of being ‘cured’ or ‘improved’. Lots of autistic people are murdered by their caregivers (and the reports are usually more sympathetic to the caregiver than the murdered autistic person). Lots of people refuse to have their children vaccinated, which also puts those children at risk of serious illness and possible death, and also risks the lives of other children who aren’t yet vaccinated, or can’t be vaccinated for some reason. There are parents giving their children potentially lethal bleach enemas, because risking their life and their health is somehow acceptable just because they’re autistic?
It’s a massive waste of resources! We’d rather people spent time and money on trying to improve services for autistic people! So much money gets wasted on research into the causes, all with a view to eradicate us. It would make a much bigger difference to autistic people if the money went towards services to support us.
Often, people claim that those who don’t want cures are trying to speak for/over those who have more obvious difficulties, or have specific presentations (for example, being completely non-verbal). They’re making assumptions, though, because there are lots of non-verbal people who communicate in other ways and have made it clear that they wouldn’t ever want to be ‘cured’. I know that some autistic people dislike being autistic and would want to be cured, but no one really asks why. Is that purely because they’re autistic and that makes their life hard/miserable, or is it because of lack of acceptance, lack of support, etc. Considering all the history and negative experiences autistic people have (often not actually because they’re autistic but because of how other people perceive us, or how things are structured to cater to allistic people), that does make me wonder whether with more genuine acceptance and with more effort going into support rather than ‘cures’ the people who do dislike being autistic might actually be much happier. It is hard to see so much negativity surrounding who you are and to not start to feel like you are somehow wrong or a burden. It’s also hard to have difficulties and see information that focuses purely on positive aspects of being autistic (which are often there to fight against the negativity, but can alienate people who are having a hard time). Basically, we either get told how awful our lives are and what a burden we are (which can hurt all of us), or we get told how gifted we are and what amazing contributions we make (which hurts the people who aren’t gifted, and who don’t feel that they contribute towards anything in any way). More recently I think there’s much more balance, and if that can continue we’d all be better off.
My personal view is that if I have to change myself that drastically to be able to live a happy life then it’s not really me living it, anyway. So I’d prefer if if resources went towards letting me be me (and enabling me to have a good life), and if people wanted me to be able to be me, if that makes sense?
We want to be accepted. People can’t accept us and want to cure us at the same time. It just doesn’t work because autism is inherent/intrinsic. You either accept us as we are, or you clearly don’t accept us.
When people are focused on trying to ‘fix’ us, we’re basically in danger, because the ultimate goal outweighs our wellbeing. When we’re viewed as ‘broken’ we’re viewed as less than human, and that means people think they can treat us however they want (because we’re not really real people until we’re ‘cured’).
We need the focus to switch in order to be able to live full and happy autistic lives, and to protect our community (including the next generations) from all those potential harms.
The idea of an autism cure is pod people levels of terrifying.
What if we could, you know, end you, but your body is still alive? What if the person inside your body were different? What if this person were in some way more convenient for us? What if this person were more in line with our thinking of how a person should be?
So, incidentally, my experience with the movie Megamind is that I ended up watching it backwards in a hotel once when I was younger and nothing else was on. And by “backwards” I mean, the first day I only caught the latter half of it and then it was on again the day after and I saw the first half.
That said, that one dang scene, is kind of an immortal one in my mind, because it’s one that has a lot more depth than it seems to.
The part that people often miss is that right after that pithy one-liner of how the difference between a villain and a supervillain is presentation… that whole conversation gets context.
Because Titan makes an immediate lunge for Megamind.
And immediately gets crunched by the giant head, and stuck in that situation because Megamind just drops out of the bottom, to a waiting vehicle, and maneuvers around him to focus on the actual issue: rescuing the hostage while Titan’s occupied.
That whole setup isn’t just, “watch me out-drama you”, it’s showing off an actual tactical asset.
Because Megamind as a character is someone who was always, always motivated by getting attention. The reason why Roxanne is never afraid of being his hostage isn’t because of her unshakable faith in a rescuing hero as much as it is that she knows, ultimately, what Megamind is doing is overwhelmingly a show. His atrocities are symbolic in nature. When he actually needs to take somebody out he dehydrates them into a cube for a while. And it’s not just Roxanne that calls him on this, either- Metro Man’s entire retirement scheme hinged on the idea that Megamind really didn’t need someone keeping him at bay from innocent civilians, because, as we’ve seen, innocent civilians really don’t have much to fear from him. Ultimately he is still, actually, just a kind of needy person desperately looking for validation and approval, neither of which can be provided by dead people.
But that’s not to say he can’t actually fight. Like any actual proper magician, he knows how to hold attention and an element of danger is how that works. He’s actually brilliant, and plenty capable of raising genuine hell.
However- he’s been doing this stageshow thing for ages. He’s mastered this. Titan may have him outgunned practically in every respect- but the guy has no conceivable head for subtlety.
So the real kicker to that whole setup, is this isn’t just Megamind being Megamind for the sake of drama- this is Megamind knowing exactly how easy Titan is to bait, dangling the largest trap he could possibly conceive in front of the guy, and doing it in an unapologetically glorious manner as any true performer would.
“Presentation” is not a superpower to be overlooked.
Realising Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb is like this really makes me wonder if there’s a name for these kinds of villains who aren’t really villains.
Yeah, I thought of Heinz too. How could I not?
I feel like they’re both in the same boat. Raised to think they were “bad” and “wrong” and “evil” for things they had no control over (Megamind growing up in a prison and being treated like he belonged there, Heinz’s parents being uniformly terrible all around), then once they were adults they decided you know what, I’m gonna be evil!!! Taking the label they’d been given and embracing it.
To quote another post, “People by and large live up to or down to the labels we are given.”
Neither of them felt like they had any option but to become Evil, but hoo boy were they going to put their heart and their natural talent for showmanship into performing evil. Because it’s all about the presentation.
And it worked. People saw them as evil, gave them the attention they so desperately craved, and even though it was all negative at least they’d earned the hatred this time.
I’m not sure there’s a name for this as a character archetype, alas, but it’s something that’s pretty relatable to a lot of peeps (as seen in that first link), and the fact that both Megamind and Heinz were redeemed at the end is important, it’s a sign that you are more than the labels people assign to you, that you can be better than that.
And hey, no reason you can’t put on a good show along the way~ 😉
I’m gonna call them ‘Theater Evil’
ruby-dear archive 