i don't know what autistic person needs to hear this but they are not watching you. the entire world is not constantly waiting for you to do something weird and laugh at you behind your back. you do not need to constantly self-police whenever there's the slightest chance another person might see you. you have a right to be your autistic self in public spaces. stop fighting yourself for their sake.
32K notes
·
View notes
for whoever needs to hear this:
starting HRT doesn't have to be a huge momentous all-or-nothing decision. you can just try it like you would an antidepressant you've been informed of the risks of.
there won't be any immediate irreversible changes overnight. you can always stop, change your dose, change your delivery system, decide it's not the right time. you can even microdose if you want to.
you don't have to tell anyone. you don't have to announce it if you don't want to.
stop waiting for a perfect time in your life because it won't come.
stop waiting to reach a mythical level of certainty that never comes to anyone, for anything.
you've been thinking about it long enough. if you have the opportunity, just give it a shot. you're worth the courage it takes to make a change in your life.
14K notes
·
View notes
In complete seriousness, they need to make laws about ads that say they can take no more than one, maybe two, clicks/taps to close/skip. No more "wait 10 seconds until you can skip the video, wait 10 seconds until you can skip the fake playable ad, wait 5 seconds until you can close the 'download now' overlay, puts up a half-screen in-app appstore pop-up (which at least you can close immediately)." This should literally be illegal to do.
Edit: this is blowing up so I just wanted to add (haha ad) that this was my "reasonable request" I also think there should be way more and way stricter laws around all advertising in general. I think most advertising as we know it today should be abolished.
40K notes
·
View notes
enough toxic masculinity I'm ready for salubrious masculinity. I'm ready for a social movement that encourages (esp straight, cis) men to indulge in things that make them more joyful, emotionally healthy, and help them strengthen not core muscles but core compassionate communication skills.
33K notes
·
View notes
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
18K notes
·
View notes
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
NOTE: a couple people on twt very kindly informed me that the arabic is formatted incorrectly—i’m unfamiliar with arabic alphabet/reading dynamics and was unaware of that, that mistake is wholly my fault. my apologies for any confusion, and thank you very much to those who reached out for the new knowledge!!! 🥰🙏
6K notes
·
View notes