Yeah, just the way I am...

When you have depression and many neurodivergencies a number of spoons go into masking. Basically effort is put in to have a particular appearance in daily life, and this requires effort that cannot be exerted on other things and causes further exhaustion that is pushed down with dopamine or pleasure seeking behavior i.e. sex, alcohol, food, shopping, additional addictive or maladaptive behavior.

Here's the thing: the effort is a responsibility, as in the social responsibility to appear a certain way for the witnesses. Without any there is no reason to engage in effort. High-functioning depression is just sticking to a routine of survival and putting in enough effort to "pass" as "normal." The more people who are witnessing this the more it is necessary to wrap your identity and effort together into ways that make passing easier. It is a part of your primary responsibility to other people to engage in your routines to present properly.

It is in my experience that my depression gets worse when the sense of outward responsibility and therefore purpose is lessened. For Ilya, whom has an identity wrapped up in his job and releases some if not most of his maladaptive behaviors when he leaves Boston, he's left with what? His new identity can be fully realized or integrated, yet there's minimal shifting of effort because he and Shane are long distance. So what are the new coping systems, where are the distractions? Who is playing witness to his efforts to appear "normal"? What baseline is his "normal" in a new social group?

I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.

Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!

But let me tell you a story:

I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.

One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.

At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.

I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.

Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.

The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.

And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.

So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.

So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.

The search engine calculates a score that aggressively favors text-heavy websites, and punishes those that have too many modern web design features.

If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you’re on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?

-Is this someone I can depend on to be compassionate and help me when grieving the loss of a parent?

-Is this someone who loves me if we suddenly no longer have sex?

(Good thing I did because my partner is now paraplegic and sex is painful for them—why would I want to hurt my partner when all I want is to see them smile?)

-Is this someone I can trust to be open and honest, even if it might hurt my feelings, and be kind in how they talk to me about what ever it is?

-Is this someone who will help support my friends and family the same way I will theirs?

-Is this someone who won’t get frustrated at me when I have a flare up?

There’s a ton of questions I asked myself before getting married. I waited until I was 28 to settle down, before that I was a feral heart breaker.

Your perspectives matter. Your representation matters. You are not bothersome for demanding equal treatment in fandom. It is not your responsibility to make fandom more welcoming and inclusive to you. It is not your sole responsibility to create all of the Black-centered content. You are not "ruining" anyone's fun for demanding better for yourself, and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. Any fandom worth being a part of should have no room for racism in it.

Black people in fandom, you are wanted. You are needed. You are loved and appreciated. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Reposting this so it gets to the right people!!