naamahdarling:

I know!  And it’s even a perfectly serviceable way to make use of crappy packaged white bread that has gone stale.  Toast, from a vertical 2-or-more slice toaster, toasted evenly on both sides in a reasonable amount of time, is so good.

I was so fucking excited to finally get a toaster for Christmas a few years back.  It healed part of my soul.

Partner was originally dubious about the four-slice toaster I bought to replace the old crappy one when it died. I am happy to report that we have now established that I am right, and it is in fact an indispensable piece of kit in a breakfast situation.

I am merciful, and mostly refrain from gloating.

geekandmisandry:

captainsnoop:

one of the things you just gotta accept when one of your posts gets big is that people are gonna accuse you of fuckin’ everything once that baby hits 1000+ notes 

any time i shit talk Brands or Stores or Capitalism In General there’s always fifty galaxy brains that say “oh you hate brands, huh? did you know retail employees work for brands? guess you hate the working class, op is classist, confirmed, here’s a link to my soundcloud and patreon” 

i have two separate posts about how i hate toys r us because they treat their employees like shit and how i hate brands employing “relatable” rudeness in their online advertising in order to trick potential customers in to thinking that “Wendy’s” is a person you can be friends with and on both posts where i criticized the company, people have responded “guess u hate retail workers” 

fuckin. de-program yourselves. you aren’t your bosses. when someone says “i hate wal-mart” they aren’t talking about you. they’re talking about the faceless billionaire businessmen that control walmart and carefully plan out ways to trick poor people out of their money. don’t identify yourself by your place of employment. that shitty cultural attitude is the same sort of nonsense that leads to people writing thank-you letters to their bosses when they get laid off. you are not “a member of the Tesla family.” you’re a cog in their machine and they care nothing of you, and you don’t owe them a goddamn thing. 

so when someone says “fuck corporate twitters and their shitty clapbacks” online, that’s not a personal attack on you. that’s an attack on hypocritical companies behaving rudely as an advertising tactic when they would fire a retail worker in an instant for acting the same way. 

Let me know when this hits a thousand notes, I have some unfounded accusations that OP hates consumers and thinks we shouldn’t buy anything and should literally starve to death.

seananmcguire:

chicleeblair:

seananmcguire:

I think so much depends on a) when you were first exposed to a thing, b) how regularly you have been exposed to it after that first time, and c) whether you’re trying to pretend the thing has no issues.

I mean, you’re really asking two different things here.  “Do you think you can enjoy something that was created by a terrible person?”  Absolutely.  For one thing, we don’t all have a complete Rolodex of Every Bad Thing Anyone Has Ever Done.  I have read and watched and loved and treasured things made by people who I later found out were awful; their awfulness clearly did not render the thing completely unenjoyable to the ignorant.

“Can you continue to enjoy something that was created by a terrible person?”  Yes, although that takes a little more awareness, I think, of what’s going on, and it’s going to be very, very personal, and very, very situational.  Joss Whedon cheated on his wife and abused his power over young actresses and was kind of a terrible person.  But Buffy was still incredibly important to me as a teen, and if it comes on the TV, I’ll get through about ten minutes of most* episodes before I forget what I know and only remember what I feel, and what I feel is nostalgia and joy and yes, enjoyment.  I don’t get to erase what he did.  I will think long and hard before I do things that put more money in his personal pockets.  But I can still enjoy some of his work.

(*Most: the episodes that clearly show certain tendencies were hard to watch before I realized how personal they were for him.  I can’t deal anymore.  I just can’t.)

“Can you enjoy something that has a lot of problematic elements?”  Absolutely.  Part of this is really going to be when you were first exposed.  I know a lot of the things I read, watched, and loved as a kid are super-problematic by today’s standards, and I’m careful to review them before I recommend them to other people, but my love doesn’t necessarily die because I learn more.  Obviously, this is subjective: Revenge of the Nerds was absolutely tainted for me by the rapey aspects of the carnival, which went completely over my head as a child, while I can still handle Real Genius despite some of the casual sexism.  How problematic is too problematic is completely individual.

“Are you allowed to enjoy something that has problematic elements?”  Everything has problematic elements.  Everything.  If we can’t see them yet, we’ll see them in ten years, and maybe we’ll be horrified, but it will also be a sign that the world is getting better.  Are people going to interrogate your enjoyment of certain things?  Yeah.  There’s a reason my friends who still love Ender’s Game mostly preface that love with “I know OSC is a bigot, but this book was so important to me when I was eleven,” or something of the sort.  There’s stuff I don’t discuss enjoying because I don’t want to have the conversation.  But unless it’s hurting other people, of course you’re allowed to enjoy it.  You get to enjoy anything you want.

Sigh. Gotta love how OS is a Bigoted Cad comes up every time….

I have friends who adore him as a person.  I have friends to whom he was a mentor and a huge cheerleader when they were getting into the business.

I have a baby sister who is gay.  I have a baby sister who is, like me, more nebulously queer–Goth Betty Page and I have spent our entire lives trying to figure our shit out–but Young James Dean is gay, period.  She is a lesbian.  She loves women.  She is also, out of the three of us, the most invested in the idea of the traditional family.  She was the first (and so far, only) of us to get married, to a woman.

Orson Scott Card put his own, personal money toward making same-sex marriage illegal in the state of California, where YJD lives.  He does not live in California.  He lives in a country where States Rights are a thing, and where the people of California should be allowed to make their own choices about things.  But he decided that no, the morality of Utah mattered more than the preferences of California, and put his own, personal money toward the cause of destroying my baby sister’s marriage.

So yeah.  OSC is a bigot.  And he has, through his direct financial choices, hurt a lot of people I care about.  For many members of the QUILTBAG community, whether they are, like YJD, absolutely gay, or are, like me and GBP, interested in being allowed to love who we love who we love without censure, supporting him either financially or otherwise is a very difficult thing to do.

adhdkirabraginsky:

a smug indulgence. tell yourself, “i’m gonna do this thing because i like it, and there’s nothing you can do to make me feel bad about it!” eat that cake! read that romance novel! be free!!!

systlin:

noriannbraindripshere:

systlin:

tatianathevampireslayer:

lovelyplot:

merrybitchmas91:

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

(Now this shouldn’t have to be said but if the “do nots” work for you then by all means do them. They’ve just never worked for me.)

This would’ve been great an hour ago

If your anxiety includes rapid heartbeat for no reason then it may help to exercise! It helps for me because I’m focused on whatever moves I’m doing and breathing, and it gives my heart rate a reason to be that high so that I can start the slow cooking down process and (hopefully) bring that heart rate down with it. Look up a quick cardio workout on YouTube or something and just do it in your room!

This is so, SO true. 

All ‘doing something relaxing’ ever did for me was give my brain MORE free time to FREAK THE FUCK OUT. 

I like how this boil down to grabbing something then tell the brains weasels to GO FETCH YOU PIECES OF SHIT

I mean. 

That’s basically it tho. 

swolerbear:

patriciavetinari:

Thin people actually think they’ve ‘earned’ their bodies. They honestly believe their thinness is a product of their own hard work, restriction of food and exercise. People who were just born thin, eat a normal diet and go to yoga twice a week think that that’s what it takes, and cannot fathom that there are fat people out there doing the same amount of exercise or more, eating the same or (in a lot of cases) a more restrictive diet and yet remain fat.

When offered a brownie thin person would joke “oh you want me to get fat” (let’s not even touch on how they think it’s somehow bad), but they honestly think eating a brownie or liking sweets and having them every day would actually make them fat.

Like, honey, you’re a size two. You can live off brownies for a month and not move and you’ll gain at best a couple of pounds. That’s how your body works. Some bodies work like that. Others don’t.

There’s a scientific study out there that found that thin people on average eat more than fat people. Yet they remain thin. They work office jobs, and go to yoga twice a week, or they’ve romanticized going to gym for a booty blasting workout and they think that this is the hard work they’re puttig in, and that if they stop, they will pretty much overnight, automatically rocket into size 20.

Even though there are plenty examples of thin people not liking exercise while being foodies and remaining thin, they will still claim that ‘it all burns off in the hard work of taking pictures for Instagram’. Or some shit. They continue to eat fast food on the same exact rate as fat people, and they drink alcohol, which is extremely high in calories, yet they think that yoga and kale salad and a smoothie the next day solve all their problems, and fat people are just too unintelligent and lazy to do exactly that.

There are thin people being foodies and hating exercise and drinking and temaining thin, and there are thin people being gymrats and counting calories and being vegan and remaining thin and thin people an mass still don’t see anything contradictory to their gospel in those kinds of thin people coexisting, while completely disproving everything we are told about diets. It’s not about a diet, diets don’t work.

Models will claim in interviews that they have to restrict themselves severely and workout dawn till dusk just to keep up the rare body type the lottery of genes has granted them and has no intention of taking away, workout or no workout. And then they die of malnourisment.

Thin people turn to fat people and tell them to follow the diet and workout for years, because they believe, ultimately, that all the body types stem from one thin one, or a couple of types of a thin one, so there must be a way to reach it. If they have that body type naturally, they feel entitled, they feel like they tried hard enough to reach it, even if by doing virtually nothing, and other fat people are not trying hard enough.

It’s akin to a person born rich telling a poor person to try harder to win the lottery of capitalism. I’m not even talking about billionaires, it’s the same mindset in upper middle class, who believe that by being born, stepping into all the doors that are open to them and literally not bankrupting themselves in a system built to prevent that, they’ve done some hard labour and deserve that pat on the back, and a brownie, that’s their guilty pleasure, alongside cocaine or some shit.

It’s an untrue, entitled mindset that’s harmful for everyone involved, including models and thin people who feel guilty for eating, and to fat people who often themselves think the same way, that if they work hard enough, they can win the lottery of genetics.

And it takes so much hard work to break free from that mindset.

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiis

Different bodies partition energy different ways for various reasons. Two people can eat the exact same diet and have the same activity levels, but their bodies will partition energy two completely different ways. We need to recognize that, we need to understand that. It’s been completely freeing for me to learn this.

violent-darts:

artheartsoul1:

violent-darts:

artheartsoul1:

violent-darts:

tzikeh:

violent-darts:

Because Rainbow Fish can be retold like this: 

A fish has a part of their body – their physical, incarnate body, what they were born with – that makes them very happy and that they are very proud of. They also have an unfortunate habit of thinking that they are better than other fish. That part isn’t good, and causes the other fish to be unhappy with them and avoid them. 

The fish is now very sad. The only person who likes the fish anymore tells him to go to the octopus, the animal framed as the adult in the story. 

The octopus tells the rainbow fish that they have been a snotty jerk and that the only way to make people like them again is to take off their scales and give them away. That in order to have any friends and make up for their behaviour, they have to rip off pieces of their own body and self and give them away to other people to make the other people happy and make up for their transgressions. 

And the rainbow fish is upset. And then another fish comes and asks them for a scale. And the rainbow fish takes off a piece of themself, their body, the thing they were born into, and gives it away. And now that fish likes him, and is materially benefitted by this piece of another fish’s actual body that has been given to it. 

And then the other fish come, and the rainbow fish rips off more parts of its body – all of the parts that used to make it happy and that it was proud of – and gives them to the other fish, because it’s not fair that the rainbow fish’s body was so much nicer. And when the rainbow fish has ripped all but one scale off, tearing out of themself all but one of the things that they possessed in their self that made them happy, then all the fish are friends with them! And everything is great! And everyone has a fair share. 

Of the rainbow fish’s, and I do quite mean to keep hammering this point, own body.

What the book says is: 

1. if you are born with something nice – like, for instance, an attractive body or a clever mind or a talent or whatever – and it makes you happy and proud, you are a horrible person and deserve to be shunned. Absolutely no line is ever drawn between Rainbow Fish’s self, their actual own body, and their behaviour. In reality, it’s their behaviour that’s the problem: they are mean and aloof to the other fish. This could be the case whether or not their body was all covered with magnificent scales. However, the book absolutely conflates the two: their behaviour is framed as a natural and unavoidable outcome of being happy about and proud of their special, beautiful body. So don’t you dare ever be happy or proud of anything you have or can do that everyone else doesn’t have exactly the same amount as, because if you do, you are horrible and by definition snotty, stuck up and mean. 

2. That in order to make up for the transgression of having something about your actual self that makes you happy and proud (which, remember, has automatically made you selfish and snobby, because that’s what happens), you must rip pieces of what makes you happy out of yourself and give them to other people for the asking, and you must never ever EVER have more of that part of – again, I hate to belabour except I don’t – your self than other people have, and that makes you a good person that people like and who deserves friends. 

To summarize, then: to be a good person you must never have something about yourself that makes you happy and proud and if you happen to be born with that something you must absolutely find a way to give it away to other people and remove it from yourself, right up to tearing off pieces of your body, in order to be a good person who deserves friends. 

This, I am absolutely sure, is not what the author intended: the author definitely meant it to be a story about sharing versus not sharing. But the author then used, as their allegory/metaphor, the fish’s own actual body. Their self. It was not about sharing shiny rocks that the rainbow fish had gathered up for himself. It wasn’t even about the fish teaching other fish how to do something, or where to find something. 

The metaphor/allegory used is the fish’s literal. body. And so the message is: other people have rights to you. Other people have the right to demand you, yourself, your body, pieces of you, in a way that makes absolutely sure that you have no more of anything about your body and self that is considered “good” than they do. 

And that might just suck a little bit except, hah, so: Gifted adult, here. Identified as a Gifted child. 

This is what Gifted children are told, constantly. All the fucking time. 

(Okay, I overstate. I am sure – at least I fucking HOPE – that particularly by this time there are Gifted children coming to adulthood who did not run into this pathology over and over and over and over again. I haven’t met any of them, though, and I have met a lot of Gifted adults who were identified as Gifted as children.) 

Instead of being told what’s actually a problem with our behaviour (that we’re being mean, or controlling, or putting other people down), or – heavens forfend – the other children being told that us being better at something doesn’t actually mean moral superiority and is totally okay and not something we should be attacked for, we are told: they’re jealous of you. That’s the problem. 

Instead of being taught any way to be happy about our accomplishments and talents that does not also stop the talents and accomplishments of other children – whatever those are! – from being celebrated, we are left with two choices: to be pleased with what we can do, or what we are, or to never, ever make anyone feel bad by being able to do things they can’t. And the first option also comes with two options: either you really ARE superior to them because you have skills, abilities and talents they don’t (or are prettier), or you are a HORRIBLE stuck up monster for feeling that way. 

(It is not uncommon for Gifted kids to chose either side, which means it’s not uncommon for them to choose “okay fine I really AM better than you”; this can often be summarized as “intent on sticking their noses in the air because everyone else is intent on rubbing them in the dirt”; on the other hand I have met a lot of Gifted women, particularly*, who cannot actually contemplate the idea of being Gifted because to do so is to immediately imply that they are somehow of more moral or human worth than someone else and this means they are HORRIBLE HORRIBLE SELFISH PEOPLE, and so will find literally any reason at all that their accomplishments are not accomplishments or that they don’t deserve anything for them.) 

Instead of being given any kind of autonomy or ownership of ourselves, we are loaded down by other people’s expectations: we are told that because we can accomplish more we must, and that daring not to do what other people want to the extent that they want with what we are capable of we are selfish, slackers, lazy, whatever. We are taught that we owe other people – our parents, our friends, even The World – excellence, the very best we can possibly do, and trust me when I say people are ALWAYS insisting We Could Do Better. And we should, or else we will be disappointing them, or letting them down, because (because we are Gifted) the only reason we could possibly be failing is not trying hard enough. 

We are, in fact, told over and over and over and over again, to rip off pieces of ourselves to give to other people to make them happy, because those pieces are valuable, but forbidden from enjoying the value of those pieces – pieces of our selves – for our own sake because that would be selfish and arrogant. And we owe this, because we were born a particular way. 

Because, metaphorically, we were born with rainbow scales, so now we have to rip off those rainbow scales in the name of Sharing, and otherwise we are selfish and horrible and deserve to be alone.** 

That is why I fucking hate The Rainbow Fish. 

Because whatever the author INTENDED, the metaphor they chose, the allegory they picked, means that THAT is the story they actually told. (And is the story that child after child after child after child I have encountered actually takes from it.) I don’t hate the author; I’m not even mad at them. But I do hate the book with a fiery passion, and it is among the books I will literally rip apart rather than allow in my house when I have kids, because I’m not going to give it to anyone ELSE’s kid either. 

*but, I would like to note, not UNIQUELY: this is something I encounter in Gifted men as well. 

**I can’t remember who it was, in relation to this, put forward the thought: if people actually talked about the access and use of children’s bodies the way we talk about access to and use of Gifted children’s minds and talents†, the abusiveness would be absolutely clear? But they’re right. 

†because sometimes it is Gifted children’s bodies in an abstract way, in that its their talent for gymnastics or their talent for ballet or sport or whatever, so I mean in a very raw way, the actual physical embodied flesh we are. 

This is 100% where the “giftedness and mental illness seem to go hand in hand but we just don’t know whyy” bullshit comes from, that gets twisted around into gifted-and-mentally-ill people believing that if they take meds for their mental illness, they’ll lose whatever it is that makes them *special*. 

EEEYUP. 

That and frankly when you can give yourself an existential crisis about the Nature of Death and Time and the Pointlessness of Creation when you’re four or five, that’s a really good way to start yourself on a track of anxiety even with everything else going well! 

Or crises about loss and soul-ending grief at four when you watch Fox and the Hound. 

This, but rainbowfish wasn’t full of themselves. They were an introvert and everyone assumed they were snotty because of it

Mmmm I handwobble at this. 

Here’s the thing about The Rainbow Fish: it is straight-up a moralistic allegory. It’s a teaching story, and a social-story, and it’s written for very small children. That’s actually part of the point, is that what’s right down there on the page in the words is really important – that’s WHY the metaphor of the scales collapses into something ugly. 

That means that we actually take the words at face value. And the words tell us that the Rainbow Fish was proud. Due to his pride, he swam by other fish who asked him to play without even answering them. 

This is snotty behaviour. When someone calls out to you, speaks to you, to refuse to answer them is a very specific social message of “I don’t believe you are worth my time.”* Even if you are an introvert (and oh god trust me it is very difficult to get more introverted than me while still functioning as a human being), basic polite treatment of your fellow sapient beings is kind of important. 

When someone asks you to play and you don’t want to, you at least say, “No, I want to swim by myself, but thanks for asking!” 

Rainbow Fish does not do this. He also responds to the first request for his scales with a “who do you think you are?” that very clearly indicates that he thinks the problem is “you do not deserve to have nice things” and not “um no this is part of my body?!”. 

And then finally, when he is actually snubbed, he is incredibly distressed. That’s all the fish do in response to his rejection of the little blue fish: they snub him, they stop talking to him or admiring him, they don’t ask him to play with them anymore. 

If he were “just” an introvert who had been being pestered, then this would be such a great outcome. It’s not – he’s SUPER DISTRESSED that he’s not getting the people running after him with positive attention anymore. 

In an adult novel that gave us that much then sure, let’s go hunting for the potential nuances; but my entire problem with this book is actually that it’s not that, that it is in fact this very bare-bones simple, direct message to kids, and so we kinda have to stick with that. And in that frame, the narrative is very clear that the Rainbow Fish is proud and snobby in his behaviour. 

And if his lesson had been about “dude, having shiny scales does not absolve you from basic polite behaviour and it doesn’t ENTITLE YOU to the admiration of the masses, maybe you should try being nice” then I AM SO THERE. 

And indeed I am there FOR GIFTED KIDS, who sometimes (often) can end up having some really bad behavioural habits (because when you’re that much quicker than your peers you can sometimes turn into an AMAZING manipulator, among other things!), learning healthy, beneficial, ethical social skills. I am here for that for ALL children. If that were the message, I’m totes there with you. 

But it wasn’t. It was “rip off a piece of your body that you had no choice about whether or not you even had in the first place and hand it out to all who ask for it and only then will you be worthy of any positive regard” and that, that is fucked up. 

*there are times in life – as with, for example, assholes on tumblr and twitter – when this is ABSOLUTELY AN APPROPRIATE SOCIAL MESSAGE, but from perfectly amiable strangers asking you if you want to do something which (we know from how upset he is when everyone snubs him) you at least enjoy being asked to do, it’s a massively dick move. 

Look, I’m autistic. I’ve been ostricized MANY times before by kids. I moved to a bunch of places. Same thing over and over. As the original person who answered the ask mentioned, no one told me what I was doing wrong. And this book certainly didn’t either. It was just “oh they’re doing their own thing and that’s different from us. Well, fuck them, they must he snobby.”

And for the record, I disagree with that notion that it’s “snobby” to silently reject a kid. If a kid says “hey, want to play?” and the other kid walks past, they’re perfectly allowed to do that. They’re allowed to ignore people they don’t want to pay attention to. If you automatically think “oh my god that person didn’t respond to me when I answered them they’re such an asshole”, then I got news for you: you’re not entitled to their reply or time. And you know, sometimes people don’t hear you. Sometimes their daydreaming, deaf, autistic, or just minding their own business.

In fact, you turned gifted kids

If you’re really here for all kids, then you should understand that kids can ignore another kid and not be “snotty”. It’s not snotty to anyone else other than neurotypicals to ignore anyone else. It might be a tad frustrating if you want their attention, but that’s the same for any other social situation where I want someone’s attention. A cute person? They can ignore me if I call out to them. Calling out someone who doesn’t want to be called is just harrassment.

If a kid walks past another kid, it’s “oh okay, they don’t want to pay attention to me right now” not “what an asshole let’s all ostracize them.”

And while kids do read stories differently and get different concious messages, the subconscious ones may differ. Little kids will often believe whatever they’re told, but even if they believe it and say they accept it, they may still feel uncomfortable inside. Because subconcious symbols and metaphors are understood even at ages too young to understand. That’s why everyone liked Majora’s Mask and felt it was profound, because it literally taught children how to process grief.

So you agreeing with the author’s intentions and insulting us who look into these things more carefully doesn’t really matter: the fact is is that even kids unconsciously process messages, and that’s how it is.

Also, I can’t get over how you actually think a kid doing their own thing is snotty. Neurotypicals *smh*

I’m also autistic. I also spent my childhood being systematically ostracized and sometimes directly and physically attacked.

 I’m also the actual person who answered the ask. I am literally the OP.

So you should possibly take a minute or two to read the words I actually wrote down instead of rushing immediately to the defensive position that I’m saying you – which is also “we” as I am also actually autistic – should be shunned for life. Which I’m not. 

What I’m saying is, the Rainbow Fish’s behaviour at the beginning is not great, and the important thing is his behaviour doesn’t have to be great for this book to still be fucked up. This is actually an important part: you don’t have to turn the Rainbow Fish into an innocent victim who did Nothing Wrong Ever for this book to be fucked the HELL up and its messages to be fucked the hell up. 

You’re right: the Rainbow Fish is entitled to ignore the other fish! And in return they are entitled to ignore him. And in fact were it completely accurate that the Rainbow Fish just didn’t want to interact with the other fish at all, there would have been zero problem! And no story! Because the Rainbow Fish would have continued to say nothing as he swam around doing his own thing, and thus the fish going “ … huh. Well I guess he doesn’t want anything to do with us so we’re gonna start ignoring him now” would have been fine.

But even as an autie one does not actually get to go “well I get to ignore and reject all your social overtures but then when I want to play you’d better be ready to do so or else you’re an ablist jerk.” That’s kind of uncool as an attitude. 

In fact I’m pretty sure that if I were to ignore you here, or had ignored you the first time, there are some things you’d’ve taken from that interaction, including “she doesn’t want to talk to/engage with me, so I’m not going to hang around here.” Because social response and interaction means things! 

To use your “cute person” analogy, you’re correct! That cute person does not owe you a response! But on the other hand when they don’t respond that cute person doesn’t get to complain that nobody wants to talk to them and nobody calls out to them or invites them out to dinner: that’s what not-responding means. It means “I don’t want to engage with you.” People aren’t required to keep trying after you’ve given them that signal. 

That’s where shit gets a bit complicated, because “I’m autistic” doesn’t actually mean “I get to completely ignore all people, ever, and have absolutely no concern for the social messages I am giving out, but then they have to be friends with me when I want to engage with them.” That’s not how even friendships between frigging autistics work well (and I gots a few of those). 

If you want people to socially engage with you, you have to socially engage with them. This is reciprocity of relationships. It’s a bugger. 

It’s more difficult for us and indeed! As kids (and sometimes as adults) usually need (patient, neurodevelopmentally appropriate, non-dehumanizing) direct instruction on how to do that, and especially how to do it in a way that is sensitive to and aware of the fact that we’re gonna get tired, overwhelmed, confused, overstimulated and stressed out at about five times the rate or more of other kids, that our needs are different, and also that the other kids need some training to in order to recognize “when Feather would rather read a book inside it’s not because she hates you, it’s because she’s tired and needs some downtime”. 

And indeed it’s super fucking uncool to expect us to magically osmose this given that this is literally part of what makes our brains different: the bit that magically osmoses this shit from context does not work the way it does for allistics. 

When the Rainbow Fish goes to the octopus a reasonable, compassionate and useful thing would be for the octopus to say “well you want them to engage socially with you – have you tried saying ‘hi’? when they call out to you? If you don’t like playing their game, have you considered responding with ‘how about you come play with me over here’ or ‘how about we swim together for a while instead’?” 

But a central and crucial part of the thing that matters about this book is that even if the Rainbow Fish is in fact being kind of snotty (which he is – that doesn’t mean he’s evil and it doesn’t mean he deserves horrible things, but his behaviour is one that translates to “I don’t want to have anything to do with you” at which point nobody else is required to have anything to do with him) the way in which the narrative plays out is fucked the hell up and hideously pathological and damaging.