NOT a lil guy, A Whole Man

And I realized that she and I had very different experiences of mental illness and neurodivergence. I was literally having autistic meltdowns from the stress of university studies, and my fellow students were disturbed and told the university to kick me out, and they did.

It was clear that this woman’s mentally ill fellow students didn’t do anything like that. They might occasionally mention suffering from depression, but it’s not severe enough that they act out like I did with my meltdowns. It’s a mental illness that is not noticeable, it doesn’t disturb other people. And that’s the kind of mental illness that is accepted by the people who love talking about accepting mental illness. The type they can ignore, the type that doesn’t inconvenience or disturb them. They only want to accept and sympathize with the mentally ill people who it’s easy to sympathize and accept.

This kind of acceptance of mental illness or neurodivergence leaves no room for autistic people like me who have serious meltdowns, or for people with schizophrenia or any condition that makes people act in ways that other perceive as disturbing or frightening. And that isn’t really acceptance, is it? If you only accept neurodivergence when it’s easy for you, you don’t accept it. That’s not good enough.

I believe that we should actually treat people with “difficult” forms of mental illness and neurodivergence with kindness and understanding. And I’m not just asking this for myself, out of my own selfish interest, because like many autistic people, I’ve had to handle other people having meltdowns or mental health crisises. And I know there are ways to react to such things with understanding and kindness instead of punishing the person and trying to get rid of them, because I have done it.

Here is another personal story, and the reason I’m writing this now. Earlier this week I was the co-host of a meatspace trans meeting. Most of that is simple tasks like opening the door for people, making coffee, introducing newcomers to how things work around here, and so on.

But last night an autistic participant was having a meltdown, getting angry and upset over their past traumatic experiences. My reaction was not to throw them out, but sit down and listen to their troubles. This person became scared of scaring other people with their meltdown and anger, and we went off to another room to sit in privacy. We sat there and I listened while they talked about their difficult feelings. Eventually this person calmed down, we hugged and went back to the main room and played a card game.

Sitting through someone’s meltdown and them being upset about their trauma isn’t fun, but it is something that you have to do if you care about other people’s well-being. And my handling of the situation wasn’t skillful at all. I don’t have the gift of gab, and my contributions to the conversation weren’t that helpful or intelligent. But I did my best, I listened and didn’t berate them, and it worked out.

I promise you if game of thrones and all those gothic literature haven't normalized incest — if slasher and horror movies haven't normalized murders or psychological torture, if hot villains haven't normalized manipulation or toxicity by now — then silly fanfiction isn't going to normalize shit.

if someone ever lets fiction affect them enough to the point they think bad things in fiction are good in-real-life because they're portrayed as such, then chances are that, with or without the fiction they consume, they are already troubled and they need help.

there are things you can worry about that are actually worrisome, but what type of fanfiction someone writes or reads is not one of those things.

you can, of course, find some things in fiction unpleasant. you can choose not to engage with fanfics that make you uncomfortable. but you have no right to tell other people what they can or can't create and/or consume. that is not your business.

For Meagan:

Bradford Morris 11136-512

FMC Fort Worth FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER

P.O. BOX 15330

FORT WORTH, TX 76119

for Autumn Hill:

Cameron Arnold 11138-512

FMC Fort Worth FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER

P.O. BOX 15330

FORT WORTH, TX 76119

If you provide them with contact information, you can get emails to and from them with Corrlinks. They need your legal name, physical address, phone number, and email address for Corrlinks, and if you ask to get in touch with them that way you'll receive an email from Corrlinks with their contact request and instructions on setting up a Corrlinks account. Corrlinks is free for the people on the outside, so if you want to contact them without paying for postage that's an option.

however, Meagan and Autumn do need to pay for a bunch of things - access to Corrlinks emails, food and toiletries from the commissary, mailing labels and stamps for mailing letters. If you want to send them commissary, the Bureau of Prisons website has the instructions on how to send commissary money. You'll need to use their deadname and register number to send money to their account:

For Meagan Morris:

Bradford Morris, register/account number 11136512

For Autumn Hill:

Cameron Arnold, register/account number 11138512

If you have any questions about all this, feel free to message me or send me an ask on Tumblr, I'm willing to pass along messages and help you troubleshoot things if necessary. As always, thanks to everyone who supports Meagan and Autumn and all the Prairieland defendants! To support all of them as they appeal their convictions and prepare for the future, you can donate to their legal fund here:

something i wrote down while I was at work

When I was walking in the town I saw some cool graffiti, and I thought, Hmm. Graffiti is a lot like weeds. It pops up in neglected and overlooked places, and thrives until someone destroys it in routine maintenance.

Like an ecosystem, art is a living system.

I quickly began to think of ways that graffiti and weeds are alike.

It is perceived as worthless or threatening economic incentives.

There are active efforts to destroy or eradicate it, which are eternally futile because of the aliveness of the system.

It appears in areas of active, violent neglect, disruption, and abandonment.

Its absence or presence can be a visual signal of class.

I thought, what are some other "weedy" artforms?

Fanfiction could be a weedy artform.

Huh, I thought. Are there domesticated or cultivated artforms?

It became clear to me that the answer was yes.

There are two types. One type is the crops: those plants that have daily necessity for all people. They are often monocultures, often highly exploitative, but they are a daily part of existence.

In art terms, this is pop culture and mass media: popular music, movies, tv shows.

The other type would be the ornamentals: those that are cultivated because they are perceived to have intrinsic value or beauty. These are the poems, paintings, sculptures, the arts that are seen as more intellectually important and more restricted in who has daily access.

Well, I thought then, are there "wild" artforms? And I thought that the answer once again had to be yes: that's textile arts, woodworking, pottery, basket making, arts that are often considered according to their practical value and not given the same consideration as fine arts. They are often romanticized and thought of as artifacts of the past to be preserved, and sometimes they are brought into cultivation (appreciation as fine arts), but they can lose their context and everyday usefulness. They are considered as threatened by economic incentives and efforts to protect them are perceived as wasteful.

Graffiti and fanfiction are weedy artforms. Are there others?

In addition to the qualities of weediness I listed up above, there is another quality: They get some of what they are from their antagonistic relationship with the mainstream view of what has value. They emerge in a space that is "owned" by another entity and thrive because there is no economical way to destroy them all faster than they can emerge. Likewise, Weeds are inherently (by some definitions) disrupting the intent of a space: they exist in defiance of what that space is "supposed to" be.

Fanfiction could be compared to weeds in an agricultural crop field: they spring up in the monoculture of popular media franchises and become more powerful and compelling than the environment that created them, even though many people will overlook their value.

Graffiti could be considered like lawn weeds: its presence has intense connotations of class, and the extermination campaigns are intense, but lawns that are neglected long enough (just like the walls of an abandoned building) can become places of diversity and thriving.

Weedy art could also be any art you create for yourself without special skill or economic incentive to do so, purely through intrinsic motivation. Many people kill these weeds before they grow into flowers, thinking that a common weed without any cultivation could never produce a beautiful flower, but if you let them grow you are often surprised. Doodles, drawings, anything you create could be weedy art.

Weeds are invincible on the evolutionary timescale, impossible to fully eradicate. They are our friends and have sustained us in many ways throughout human history. I read in a paper once a theory that true monoculture is only an idea in the human mind, never able to be truly realized, because weeds will always emerge and disrupt this false idea of perfection.

Certainly, our ecosystems are held together and sustained with life within this gap between how we imagine the world should be (clean, perfect, without weeds) and how the world really is (weeds! weeds! WEEDS!). Without weeds, the biodiversity in the world around us would crash dramatically.

Fat Horse No. 5

It’s the year of the horse and I’ve always been a horse girl at heart, so I’m finally taking advantage of the excuse to fill the world with fat little horses! These felted friends are about the size (and shape!) of an apple, and if you happen to have any apples to share I’m sure they’d help you out! This one is based on a G1 My Little Pony who has never appeared in any version of the show and has a silly name, because I’m the most annoying kind of MLP fan

I think of this... often. she was born in the first decade of the 20th century. like. this shit is. so recent. and, in many cases, actively ongoing in spite of some very serious material improvements in womens rights

my dentist was Dr. Brian Mazel in Scottsdale, AZ! he’s done at least two sets of fangs (I was pointed in his direction from somebody in a body mod community) and he was really quick and delightful, but definitely seems a little hesitant to perform the procedure. I had to assure him several times that I understood the risk of damaging them and he was very thorough in making sure I had the correct anatomy to support it.