or was it in my head

Communities that claim to be inclusive, progressive, &/or escapist have MORE of a responsibility to fight ALL forms of bigotry in their spaces than spaces that don't.

Because our spaces are NONE of those things if we let that shit slide in the name of some kind of toxic positivity, faux-solidarity, missing stair "if we just ignore it it'll be fine, YOU'RE the problem for pointing it out" nonsense. This goes for community activism, this goes for political parties, this goes for queer spaces, and yes, THIS APPLIES TO FANDOM.

found the post. to be fair to them. not the most egregious thing said on this post, but they did endorse the rest of it so.

ignoring "horny frat boys" being an insane way to describe percy, byron, and polidori, not to mention poor fucking claire lmao. theres a pervasive issue of people really wanting mary shelley's life and career to be a story of a woman being greatly underestimated and silenced by her (male) peers but persevering nonetheless and this idea is generally pushed in popular culture and by some ill informed biographers to the point that it is just no longer reflective of her actual experiences. i think people forget a lot that mary shelley existed in radical circles that, while not devoid of misogyny, had moved past the idea that women shouldn't have opinions and be writing and have lives outside of their relationships with men and who certainly were not discouraging her from pursuing a career in writing. she was deeply admired for being the daughter of wollstonecraft and godwin and then as a writer in her own right, and i think its sad that this idea that she was discouraged from pursuing writing by the men in her life, especially by her husband, is so pervasive because one of the most interesting things about her social group to me is the creative relationships built among them. people joke a lot that percy shelley is just remembered as the wife of the author of frankenstien as a diss on him but everything he is on record saying about her work implies that he would be fucking honored. they had a deep creative partnership and mutual admiration for one another's work that was much stronger than even their romantic relationship and its deeply frustrating how that is often disregarded and put down because people are so fixated on this stereotype of how they think 19th century women should exist that they dont let themselves engage with what her life was actually like.

we got an hour long infodunp about dungeon crawler carl, the author, the story, all of the adaptations and which are the best, the voice actor who reads the audiobooks, how much the kickstarters raised, I mean EVERYTHING

gentle attempts to widen the scope of the conversation into things like "the phenomenon of lit rpg in general" were very strongly resisted so after a while we just stopped trying and just nodded and Reacted to what he told/showed us. and then after he left we absolutely lost our shit about the Unskippable Dungeon Crawler Carl Nurse Cut Scene

i feel like when I talk about social skills I have learned I often focus on, like, things that are perceived as autistic deficits and how I compensate for them. that's true, I have worked a lot on those things. but also VERY IMPORTANTLY, along with the skill "remember to take turns in a conversation and ask the other person questions back," there is a parallel skill of "understand that incidents of failing to do this in a conversation are not malicious"

I try to think of being patient and friendly during an hour long infodump about something I'm not particularly interested in as a gift that I can give someone. it's annoying but it isn't hurting me. sometimes people have weird communication days just like they have weird hair days.

I understand that it is important to try to have reciprocal conversations where I show interest in other people and actively listen and ask questions about them. I also have a few friends who don't have that skill. they'll just talk about themselves. so a skill that *I* have learned is to pretend they have asked me about myself and respond as though they have. they'll say some things about them and their lives, and then I will take the initiative to share stuff about my life. this was difficult for me for a while because I felt like if I wasn't explicitly invited to say something or asked about myself that indicated a lack of interest. it usually doesn't. my friends who don't have that particular conversational skill respond to my spontaneously listing all the stuff that's going on in my life/stuff about my interests/etc very positively. they like that I do this so they don't have to feel self conscious about having trouble remembering to ask me about myself.

i think that understanding different communication methods that may not be the extremely basic rote "take turns in a conversation and invite people to talk about themselves!" type stuff is a VERY important social skill. and tbh? goes along with trying to give people grace and the benefit of the doubt/good faith/whatever.

i think that outlining what "usual" conversational expectations are is helpful bc people may not understand why they get the reactions that they often get from others during or after social interactions.

i also think it's not great to frame it like "if you don't do this you're Rude and Bad and it is correct that people do not like you"

something can be broadly understood and experienced as inconsiderate and ALSO be something someone can't help. we can learn to compensate for some things to the degree that we are able and I think it is important to try and learn as much as we can about social interactions and expectations. and also, like... sometimes that doesn't look like "I simply know now that interrupting people is rude and elect not to do it"

Interrupting people is the conversational issue I still struggle with the most. i know ! its bad! to interrupt! and also sometimes i just do. so part of "compensating" for me is knowing when I do it (something it sometimes takes effort to spot in the moment) and making dure to say "I'm so sorry, I interrupted you, what were you saying?" when I do

if "knowing most people find it more Socially Correct to ask questions -> get asked questions in return" is information that someone can possess about socialization, then "some people's brains don't really work in a way that makes doing that intuitive. they may not do this in conversations and it is not malicious" IS ALSO information you can know and SHOULD APPLY to your interactions

i have been seeing an increasing number of like "y'all don't know how to act/manners are important actually" posts and like... i agree... they are. and also it's important to not end up just sounding like we are ABA practitioners because I will be so real, some of these posts are pretty much an ABA hand out 😬