Child of Loki

So are

colostomy bags

Diapers

insulin pumps

Oxygen systems

rollators

hearing aids

compression garments

prosthetics

FREEDOM AIDS

- service animals

- noise cancelling headphones/ear defenders

- wheelchair attachments

- fidgets

IT’S DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH YALL

you play it while walking around with friends and if you see something and don't know what it is or wonder why its there, you stop and point and say Hey What Is That Thing. and everyone speculates about it. googling it is allowed but preferably after spending several minutes guessing or asking a passerby about it

weird structures, ambiguous signs, unfamiliar car modifications, anything that you can't immediately understand its function. eight times out of ten, someone in the group actually knows, and now you know!

a few examples from me and my friends the past few weeks: "why is there a piece of plywood sticking out of that pond in a way that looks intentional?" (its a ramp so squirrels that fall in to the pond can climb out) • "my boss keeps insisting i take a vacation of nine days or more, thats so specific" (you work at a bank, banks make employees take vacation in long chunks so if youre stealing or committing fraud, itll be more obvious) • "why does this brick wall have random wooden blocks in it" (theres actually several reasons why this could be but we asked and it was so you could nail stuff to the wall) • "most of these old factories we drive past have tinted windows, was that just for style?" (fun fact the factory owners realized that blue light keeps people awake, much like screen light does now, so they tinted the windows blue to keep workers alert and make them work longer hours)

what you mean is that you've been good. you were a good team player. you would have never considered yourself perfectionist - those are people more popular, prettier, more successful - but you carry any flaw like a secret in you, terrified someone will desert you for the simple reality of your personhood.

if you were good you could be loved. you could be loved if you were selfless and thoughtful and caring. if you bent over for every person, if you went above-and-beyond, it would absolve you of who you actually were. deep down, how horrible that you had needs. that you had boundaries, that you had desires. you learned young that you cannot afford to cut people out of your life - you would have nothing left. it is better to live in the service of others, to supplicate. to worship. you weren't exceptional, you had to make up for it in some way. to prove to others you were worthy.

if they need you, it's the same thing as loving you. if you are always-there, always-listening, always-friendly, you are filling a role. you have a purpose. you are living correctly.

villain era, you repeat. you mean: yesterday you finally told a man no. for hours afterwards, you couldn't control your heartbeat. you mean: you've been saying positive affirmations on repeat, trying to teach yourself any new thing about how self care is necessary. you mean: three weeks ago, due to a scheduling conflict, you finally told a coworker that no, you couldn't do them a "quick favor". you have felt bad about that ever since. sure, it would have made you work late and it would have been extra stress - but you feel bad about it nevertheless.

you tell your therapist you have been leaning into evil. she asks what that means. when you tell her: sometimes i prioritize my own needs, she doesn't find it funny. she looks at you a long time.

"and that's evil?" she clarifies.

In the 10 years that I have worked on sharing queer history, I have never been attacked as intentionally and with as much consistency as I have in 2026. Most regularly, I'm called a groomer or harassed for mentioning Palestine.

I joke about it to my friends, because I don't actually have anyone in my life under the age of 20, how could I possibly be a groomer? It is easier to cope with all of it when I can laugh with people. No one finds it funny anymore, not even me.

When the first waves came calling me an anti-Semite, I felt compelled to ask some of the Jewish people in my life whether there was something I wasn't seeing. They assured me that I was doing nothing wrong, and I dug further into my studies. The further I got into researching the accusations levied against me, the more I was harassed for the moments I shared of my journey.

As a 29 year old adult, when I share that I read queer (often specifically trans) books, the comments are predictable. When I share that some of the books I read include sex, things get worse. When I post a book that discusses the experiences of queer Jewish people during the holocaust, I know that there will be immediate backlash, and there is. Then I am asked to edit a book synopsis to remove mentions of genocide from a poetry book about Palestine.

All of this to say, I have experience in what upsets these people and it is books that are being targeted. It is reading, readers, and anyone who encourages literacy that activates the worst people to respond. Which is why I HAVE to keep pushing you to read more. Read widely, read anything, read books that disagree with you, read porn, read queerly, read physically, read ebooks, read audiobooks, and fight the book bans sweeping North America.

My ADHD ass will get bored waiting for the code to arrive, flip over to another website and promptly forget about logging in until well after the code has expired, necessitating requesting another code and risking my account being locked out.

To avoid more punishment, the child sits still and is quiet. But they have to actively remind themself constantly to sit still and be quiet.

The teacher sees the child sitting still and being quiet. The teacher treats this as the baseline.

Since the child is putting a lot of effort into sitting still and being quiet, doing so distracts from paying attention to what the teacher is teaching. The child then is punished for not paying attention.