aromagpie:

You are red.

You like being red! It’s a nice color! But you’re surrounded by greens and blues all the time, and it would be nice to find some other people like you.

So, you look for red spaces. It turns out that there aren’t many, but there are plenty of spaces for yellows and oranges. You share some experiences with them - especially the oranges.

At some point you find a group advertised as a place for all warm colors, so you join. After all, red is a warm color! It seems great at first. People talk about how nice it is to be the color of the sun, and you agree - the sun is more yellow than red, but it’s reddish!

They talk about how they’re the color of buttercups; of school buses; of gold. The yellows sometimes talk about what they share with greens, and you’re a bit uncomfortable, but you let them do it because it’s important to them. Everything seems to be about the yellows. They talk about oranges too, but the yellows seem to care an awful lot about making sure that nobody assumes that all of them have some red like the oranges do. It’s a little strange that they fight so hard to prove that they aren’t like you.

One day, you happen to talk a bit about being red, and mention some of the experiences you share with purples. Some of the yellows are a bit uncomfortable (just like you were all the times that they talked about shared experiences with greens), and ask you not to talk about that anymore.

You’re frustrated. This was supposed to be a space for all warm colors, and you would like to be able to talk about your experiences as a warm color.

You keep encountering yellows with a habit of referring to yellow experiences as warm color experiences. They act like yellow and oranges are the only warm colors. It makes you feel like other people don’t care about you; like you don’t matter. This frustrates you even more.

When you tell yellows about your frustrations, some ignore you. Some deny that anything they’ve done has hurt you. Some tell you that they’re orange, not yellow, so they can’t have hurt you. There are even some who insist on calling you a “warm color with no yellow” instead of a red. You grow even more frustrated.

You don’t want to fight. You want to build a strong alliance of warm colors. 

Most of all, you just want to be listened to.

bnq:

me and my gf were talking and there was a beat of silence and we both broke it at the exact same time, but in very different ways

my gf: I love you—

me, simultaneously: Mootball Feetlong.

intersex-ionality:

just for reference, intellectual property isn’t things like, ‘what if this popular character, but nonbinary.’

it’s things like, ‘here is a 500 page book i wrote exploring the life of this popular character as nonbinary, including a specific set of plot details, supporting character decisions, and design choices. if someone else subsequently writes another book about a similar popular character being nonbinary, which uses the same plot, design choices, and supporting character decisions with the names swapped, they’re copying the work i already did in writing my book. they are profiting from my work. i should be compensated, because they could not make any money from their book if i had not made my book first. it would be literally impossible for them to produce the book they wrote, without building on my book first.’

the collection of details and decisions is what constitutes intellectual property, not the framing of, ‘what if this superhero was trans.’

an au or a prompt or a one line summary is not intellectual property.

jupitermelichios:

dancinbutterfly:

flippyspoon:

toybeluga:

legsdemandias:

legsdemandias:

Commenting fanfiction is the easiest thing in the world once you start doing it. 

I leave a comment on every single fic I read. Sometimes when I read published books I go and leave a comment somewhere the author can find it. Granted, I literally majored in ‘leaving comments on fics’ (English Education), but once you start doing it it just becomes second nature. Now you’re gonna go to the Ozymandias school of leaving comments: 

Problem: I can’t leave kudos again.

Beginner: This is a second/third/fourth Kudos

Advanced: This is my second/third/fortieth time reading this, I still love it so much. Here are a few new things I noticed. I like the way you personally do x, y, z compared to other authors I’ve read (in this ship/genre/fandom).

Problem: I don’t know what to say :(

Beginner: Just list what you did to read this fic. “I stayed up late reading this”, “I read this on a crowded train”, “this kept me company while sick”. 

Advanced: X,Y,Z parts made me get butterflies, and I had a physical reaction to this part of the story, I squealed outloud when characters did x,y,z. I blushed at this part. I laughed out loud here. Whatever. 

Problem: I’m embarrassed to leave a comment (what if I annoy the author?)

Beginner: Short answer: you won’t EVER annoy the author (unless you’re needlessly mean) But to start, be generic, you don’t have to spill your soul in the comments section. “I liked this” “I enjoyed reading this” “nice fic”.

Advanced: This really meant a lot to me that you wrote this. This is something I feel like I’ve always wanted to read. This fic hit me in all the right places. Etc. 

Problem: I don’t know how to express myself/my experience 

Beginner: My beginners go to is to highlight a line, put that in your comment and say “i liked this” or to identify basic emotions you had while reading and comment those “this made me happy” “this part made me sad” “i almost cried” “you made me laugh” 
Advanced: “Highlighted line” This line made me smile because it has to do with character development/it’s really romantic/it’s so unique/it’s moving. Sometimes I don’t highlight a line at all, I just talk about the stuff I’ve noticed were unique to the fic. “I love the way you did this particular thing with this character”. 

This? This is an amazing post. This is the Captain Awkward of commenting posts—it addresses all your fears directly and gives you actionable scripts for each one.

Spoilers: I FUCKING LOVE HEARING WHAT YOUR FAVORITE LINE IN THE STORY WAS. PROSE. DIALOGUE. WHATEVER TELL MEEEEE. I should do that more in my comments too- I sure love hearing it.

Never stop commenting because “it’ll be a wall of text” we love this. We love it all.

It sounds stupid but I’m not joking when I say there have been days when getting a nice comment on AO3 is what got me through the day. When remembering that people were waiting for the next chapter was what got me through the week. Please please comment, even if it’s just ‘i liked this’ seriously, anything.

aroworlds:

feral-frayromantic4positivity:

“I’m Looking Through You” by the Beatles is like….. so incredibly Frayromantic.

“I thought I knew you, what did I know?”

“You’re thinking of me the same old way.. I’m looking through you and you’re nowhere”

“Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight”

Just.. maybe give it a listen?

biaroace:

I need the following flags, but I am on a budget so I am looking for the cheapest options I can find (I am also thinking about sewing them myself to be honest, but I’m not sure about how it would turn out). Also I live in Europe, so shipping could be an issue. By the way, the flags I need are:

Oriented aroace;

Lesbian (the version with 2 orange stripes and 2 pink ones);

Demigirl;

Queer chevron.

NerdyKeppie definitely sells the queer chevron. But they’ll make any flag upon request, so you can easily get all four there! And they have all different sizes: 26x36 in, 51x60 in, 68x80 in, and 88x104 in. So… the smallest is about 66 cm by 91.5 cm, and up.

The smallest ones are $22, which it looks like is currently 19.95 euros. Shipping is another question. But they also have a payment plan option, if AfterPay is available in your country.

I hope that helps!

Omg…. well it definitely helped me anyway, because it made me realize I could potentially lobby my partner to get the oriented aroace flag on a galaxy bedspread instead of the bi one… even though it only applies to me, lol. It would be so pretty?

It’s my birthday today, so it’s a good day to make ridiculous requests 😂

nerdyqueerandjewish:

Also only like 500 people have received loan forgiveness through that non profit / public work forgiveness thing, and like 75k have applied so I would not trust

nerdyqueerandjewish:

*puts on my gov employee hat* student loan debt should be forgiven for everyone across the board because reviewing applications and creating a system to do so will probs cost more than what we would save by filtering out the rich kids who would have little/no student debt anyway

makingqueerhistory:

makingqueerhistory:

Hey everyone! This is a reminder that if you sign up to be a patron you get really cool rewards in addition to early access to everything and a lot of insider insight! That also includes a vote in what designs we put out in our store! In other words, for only a few dollars a month, you can get a lot of your money’s worth! And you get to support and help grow an all-queer business, which will allow us to branch out and give you even cooler and better content. We really need all the support we can get, and appreciate every single dollar sent our way. You can find our Patreon here: 

https://patreon.com/queerhistory

Or if you would prefer to not give support on a monthly basis, you can send us a one-time donation here:

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/queerhistory

We lost quite a few patrons this month, so of you can become a patron please do

queeranarchism:

I hate the kind of classist ableist activism that holds language purity as the highest form of acceptance.  This is most common in identity politics and in particular within transgender politics, which I will focus on for this post. 

What I’m talking about is language purity: the idea that there is a universally accepted set of words that are okay to use and a universally renounced set of words that are not okay to use. This is accompanied by the idea that you can recognise a good activist or ally by the fact that they always use the right words and a bad activist or ally by that they use the wrong words.

On Tumblr, being a super language dense place by nature, activism tends to focus even more on language and the results are often messy. 

There’s more than language

Language has power, language mattters, but so do actions, attitudes and mindsets.

Not every transgender person treats ‘always get my pronouns right and use the right terms to describe me’ as the ultimate bar for good allyship. For a lot of people, allies are people that drive you to your doctors appointment, that allow you to have a break down about spilled coffee after a particularily hard day, that see you for who you are, that attack transphobes on your behalf and whether those people always get the language right is a minor thing.

At the same time trans positive language can not get us out of poverty, trans positive language can not end capitalism or destroy the prison system. We need to keep in mind that there is much more to be improved in our lives than just what people call us.

Language purity can be ableist and classist.

Memory issues are real.

Constantly learning and using new vocabulary isn’t easy for everyone and comes way more natural to people farmiliar with academia.

A lot of words are unnecessarily long and hard to spell because language purists prefer latin rooted words over far easier intuitive alternatives.

It’s very easy to intentionally or unintentionally cut lower class people and people with learning and memory difficulties out of conversations by making sure their voice only matters if they all use the right language.

Activist spaces online and offline are virtually always middle class dominated, higher education dominated, abled dominated spaces where a lot of people use language to score ‘good activist points’ and use it to bully people who are not like them out of the community. 

The ones most hurt by oppression are often the least able to invest time and effort in learning the ‘right’ language and also the least interested in learning the ‘right’ language. They’ve got other shit to worry about.

Because of this, language purity can be a tool to exile and de-radicalize, used to push out the ones least likely to settle for diplomatic compromises and slow change and the most likely to call for change right fucking now.

We can do better. 

Does that mean we need to abandon all attempts to move towards a more progressive language that humanizes us? Does that mean the people that complain about ‘political correctness gone mad’ are right? Of course not. Language has power, language mattters, but language also has the power to do harm when we wield it ourselves and it has limits too.  

We simply need to be a bit less dogmatic about enforcing the ‘right’ language and a bit more sensible about who is using a kind of language and why. 

We simply need to be more aware of moments when the language we use and the way we handle language ‘rules’ make our spaces inaccessible, ableist and classist. 

We simply need to recognize language purity being used as a tool of power to bully, exclude or deradicalize. 

We simply need to keep remembering that we have a lot more work to do than just fix our language.

survivor-positivity:

you made it through what you thought would destroy you before. you can do it again now

himedere-senpaii:

I can’t stress to you how fucking important it is to tell your child you’re proud of them TO THEIR FACE. Don’t fucking wait until the moment they go into hysterics. Don’t wait until they tell you that they don’t think you’re proud of them. FUCKING TELL THEM EVERY DAY. Even if it’s something you don’t understand, and they’re BEAMING, you fucking tell that child you’re proud of them. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

arolution:

Nothing is inherently reserved or necessary for either a friendship, romantic relationship, queerplatonic relationship, alterous relationship etc.

It’s all up to the people in the relationship to define what constitutes their own relationship.

autismserenity:

stabk1d:

transcoranic:

natureautie:

autismserenity:

ausomely-autistic:

babyitsbumblebeetuna:

lifedysphoric:

autistic-parenting:

myautisticpov:

autismserenity:

alv529:

jvthewhovian:

autismserenity:

autismserenity:

are you a hoodie autistic or a heavy coat autistic?

I literally came to a complete and abrupt stop in the hallway just now when I saw this had 306 notes after like a couple of hours. also, like thirty seconds after I had been rhapsodizing to myself about how much I love my new hoodie :D

both, so I think the answer to that question is I am a greedy autistic.

I wear a black, heavy, wooly longcoat with a huge hood. I’m either a Dementor Autistic, a Nazgûl Autistic, or the Phantom Blot.

i love this!

I too wear a long, black coat. It also has a fur hood, so I figure that makes me a Captain Cold/Darth Vader hybrid Autistic.

Hoodie. I slap offenders with my long sleeves.

I have a duster length sweater (is about five and a half feet long?) that I wear everywhere. I wish it had a hood. Hmmm…. I should ask my wife to knit a hood for it…

Hoodies 4 Lyfe !

Mine is a World of Warcraft hoodie, does that make me a “FOR THE HORDE” Autistic?

I’m the rare and often mis-identified cashmere sweater-set autistic. 

it got better

Hoodie autistic here with no bad feelings about those of us who wear heavy coats!

Hoodies for life!

im a 4 layers of hoodies autistic

get you an autistic that can do both

friendlyneighborhoodaromantic:

aro-culture-is:

friendlyneighborhoodaromantic:

aro-culture-is:

Aro culture is community confusion

So… within the aro community, we tend to base discussions around two terms a lot which I’d like to explore: aroallo and aroace.

As a arodemi person, this divide puts me in a kinda awkward place where I generally identify as “asexual” but relate more to aroallo conversations. Where is my place? Can it be both when neither is right? Or is this a category I have yet to see that exists, or perhaps separate entirely? I don’t understand sexual attraction as a whole and yet I do on occasion experience it, but it isn’t a significant part of my identity. I don’t feel that either the label aroallo or aroace are mine to claim.

And before anyone tried to offer me platitudes, I know that either community largely would say that I can belong as much as I’d like to each, but I don’t think I’d largely like to call myself either. I don’t believe I am the only one who feels this way, and with the gap between the aroallo and aroace communities growing larger as of late as we acknowledge the harm the ace community has brought to aros and continues to bring, I suspect now is the time to ask. Now is the time for me to speak up.

Are there any other aro acespecs out there who feel the same? Differently? Any aroallos or aroaces want to ask about the ways they might relate and where things fall flat?

I doubt I’ll get much of any response without aroallos and aroaces sharing, so please do!

I personally can’t relate (I’m aroallo) but I really hope you’re able to realize that you’re not alone! I also would like to know what the aro and/or ace community in general could do to fix this

So, from just my personal opinion, I think that there’s a few ways to go about this:

1) what else but language in a linguistic discussion? Try to watch that posts don’t put aroallos and aroaces as binary terms, maybe include aro acespecs (term could be different if this discussion grows, but I feel like arodemi just creates the same problem all over again).

2) who does your post have potential to relate to? You don’t have to change the content per se, but you can tag it appropriately. Of note, I’m looking at you, ace community. If it isn’t explicitly aro, please don’t tag it as such. You aren’t boosting. You aren’t finding common ground. You are drowning our voices with your experiences. Feel free to signal boost aro posts, but recognize if they belong to you or not. As far as the aroallo community goes, I’ve yet to largely see any issues with this.

3) if you run a larger blog, consider posting about this concept. I don’t mind if that becomes larger, I just want to see myself and the others I have yet to meet feel less alone. Ask your followers about their experiences and boost, but do not speak over their voices. Medium and small blogs (wherever that distinction lies lol), try to talk on a more individual level with each other and see allow for discussion.

4) if others don’t feel like I do about a separate community, let them! Please direct them to me as well since I would love to hear more opinions.

5) lastly, aro culture is protecting each other. If you see anyone who’s being out of line, excl*sionary, or insulting instead of communicating, tell them and block them if they just want a fight!

Thank you so much for replying, I feel like all aros can relate to #2