The Fish Flock

The music, the animation, the pacing, the momentum, amazing.

Government took me away from my father when I was around 11 because my neurodivergent traits apparently made it look like my father was abusing me. [Flinching away from being touched and not speaking with anyone. Like I had anyone to speak to when I entered that school in the middle of the school year.]

My dad has 4 half siblings and two step siblings. They're all a decent bit younger than him. When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion, and I realized something—my dad did not respect his siblings. He looked down on all of them. He saw them as fuck-ups and overgrown children. My dad had the American dream: well paying management job, suburban house, wife, and three kids. My aunt and uncles did not. Excluding my aunt, none of them were married or in serious relationships. They hadn't really settled into long term careers. Several of them were working the kind of jobs that get called "Unskilled labor." So he looked down on them because the youngest one was in his thirties (and several were much older), and yet none of them had "settled down" into what he saw as lifelong, permanent careers and relationships and lives. He was polite to their faces, sure, but I heard how he talked about them behind their backs, to my mother.

And then a few years ago, we visited his brothers again for Thanksgiving. And I realized something again--he respected them now. He saw them as equals. Why? Well. All of a sudden, every single one of them had serious, committed romantic partners. They didn't even need to still be with those partners—one of my uncle's fiance passed away from cancer before they could marry—just having had one showed that they matured into a real adult participating in society. In fact, at one point, my aunt was telling my mom about how one of my uncles was no longer living in an apartment she owned, but instead, after having a steady girlfriend for about a year, he moved in with her. And my mom literally said to my aunt, "wow. Look at that. He finally grew up."

One of the lines that frequently gets repeated about anti-aspec sentiment is "why would anyone hate asexuals/aromantics/etc? They aren't even doing anything." And that's exactly it. In the eyes

(tags via @grimark)

first of all lmfao, second of all YEAH!!! Hang on I need to yap about this, I have so many opinions.

To make an example: one of the details in the book I keep returning to is Rocky's attitude around eating. Weir mentioned in various interviews that the idea came to him as a subversion of how aggressively social the act of eating is for humans compared to other biological needs. Which is a fair enough place to start with, but this kind of social taboo is usually tied to reasons like sanitation and avoiding risk of infection. Which fits, since as monostomes the process of nutrition and waste disposal are inextricably tied for an Eridian (not to mention the whole Making An Open Wound Per Meal deal).

Thing is, that wouldn't necessarily extend to the preparation of food, but Rocky is still uncomfortable and asks Grace not to comment while preparing his meal. Meat on Erid requires butchering to separate the viable parts from the nonviable. The Eridians doc describes the act of manually tearing food to pieces as pleasurable, "similar to chewing good food for humans"... except butchering larger prey is something that would require collaboration, and (shared) pleasure is just as much of a biological incentive towards social behaviour as fear.

I think it would be interesting if this was a peculiarity of Rocky's specific culture! Or if there was another Eridian clan who, due to climatic or migratory reasons, had to deal with recurring food scarcity and was used to curing and preserving large quantities of food to stock up as a consequence. This would decouple food preparation from the (gross) act of eating itself, making it more positive and commensal.

Imagine Grace striking up conversation with the nutrition technician that organises his taste tests like, "hey thank you for all you're doing, I know dealing with food is super gross for Eridians. just want you to know i appreciate it a lot" and the technician is like "??? huh? oh—OH. saviour grace misunderstands. preserving food and making it edible very fun where I'm from."

"Seriously? Rocky always said it was embarrassing"

"Not surprising, Saviour Rocky ♩♪♫ Eridian. ♩♪♫ Eridians ridiculous about food."

We're seeing increasingly that the attack vectors that were successfully deployed against the science on trans healthcare are being adapted into attacks on autism/ADHD and vaccines, and the damage a right wing government is capable of doing is huge when this goes unaddressed.

There’s so much girl per square girl