#bumble rumbles

I’m aware the book probably wouldn’t be as interesting if a bunch of kids watched adults solve their problems, but as a kid with parents who listened to my concerns, it always felt very tropey to me. Like a formula: to get 1 kids book, you add 1-5 kids aged 10-16, throw in an impossible-seeming task, a Big Bad that should probably be handled by a government military, and adults who won’t believe a word any of the kids say. Tada! You have the next kid’s lit hit!

But as I get older and see how many other adults genuinely don’t bother listening to anyone under the age of 21, it’s blindingly obvious to me that other children my age did not see that as a silly trope, that was their reality. And their extremely COMMON reality.

I don’t know. I think it says something about how we care for those who need us most, that they don’t feel they can tell us when they’re in danger.

When you write the phrase “high cheekbones” when describing a character, do you actually know what that looks like?

Because, like, I severely struggle with figuring out faces because. Faceblind. So I’d been just completely discounting that description but I see it SO OFTEN, I read those two words SO COMMONLY that it feels like either a “this is my character, beautiful woman, she has cheekbones and amazing tits” sort of beauty standard thing OR yall also don’t know what high cheekbones looks like.

They are the ones who are fighting for rights in a very very real sense. Donations pay lawyers to file suits - suits that are very nearly the ONLY thing stopping the Trump admin from doing all their shit in the shadows. It’s important that they’re fought every step of the way. It’s important that even if they do not win, that they are dragged into the light as much as possible.

If you can donate, donate here.

And secondarily, Wikipedia is also shy of their goal - if you can, donate to them as well. It is imperative that information be readily available to the public as much as humanly possible.

If you can’t, make it your mission to talk to as many people about it as possible.

Dream dedicated 25 seconds to his use of the word “retarded”. His entire response video that he actually sat down, scripted, read out, edited, and then captioned is 10 minutes long.

He dedicated less than 5% of the fucking video to the thing that everyone is mad at him about. To the thing it took him ALMOST A WEEK to admit he was wrong about.

The length of the apology isn’t the issue - had he uploaded JUST that 25 seconds, it would have been perfectly acceptable. But he didn’t.

I want to emphasize - I was neutral towards the guy before this shit. I found his videos boring and was happy for him when the allegations turned out to be false (though, idk why he was chatting with fans on Snapchat in the first place?). This action and his reaction to being rightfully called out is what has made me genuinely dislike him.

First off, the tweet itself and all of his reactions to it.

It’s clear to me based on how he has addressed this, first by insisting he can “reclaim” the word retarded because he’s autistic and then by skimming over it in the crash out stream that he does not understand why using that word that way was ableist.

“Retarded” was originally a kinder, medicalized term used to describe people who are cognitively disabled. It was made to replace words like “weak-minded”. Its association with nonverbal and disabled people caused laypeople to use it to compare those they insulted with it to the cognitively disabled.

Using the word “retarded” to insult someone is comparing them to the cognitively disabled, and expresses the belief that those with cognitive disabilities are lesser, unintelligent, less than human, etc.

It is harmful because those with cognitive disabilities are still humans who deserve dignity and kindness.

And it’s clear to me that Dream doesn’t understand that THIS is the reason that he shouldn’t have used “retarded” this way. It’s clear to me that he believes that people just feel insulted by the term.

It’s clear to me that he didn’t expect anyone cognitively disabled to see it, let alone be able to respond to it.

It’s also clear to me that he didn’t apologize because he genuinely felt bad about it - his attempts to gloss over it 3 times now and his insistence that being autistic makes it okay for him to use it against others is indicative of that. He apologized because everybody refused to shut up about it. He apologized to make people forget he said it. And he took a fucking WEEK to even attempt to apologize because he was pissy that nobody laughed with him.

Secondly, his bitching about other creators hurting his feelings.

Dream doesn’t seem to get that the reason so many people yelled at him over a meme was because he targeted regular people besides Tommy when he made that post. 15 million, in fact. Just regular fans.

Tommy and his friends only hurt… Dream. They didn’t attack his fans with a fucking slur.

Just to get that bit out of the way.

Thirdly, the burying of his apologies in complaints of other creators bullying him is a tactic to keep people distracted.

Whether he understands why people hate what he said or not, Dream has buried those apologies in accusations and complaints about bullying as a way to deflect from what he did wrong. It’s a way to shift the narrative back to well-trodden ground and keep people distracted from what he did to kick off this whole thing. I’m fuckin’ disappointed in people who have let that distract them from it.

And the fact that he ended the video response with

“And you don’t need to put other people down to lift yourself up”

Is just fucking rich coming from the guy who just punched down on cognitively disabled people.

[ you can watch his full video in connoreatspants’ vod reaction. Video starts at 3:50 ]

And just for the record? I’m cognitively disabled. I have been very open about having a memory disorder, a severe learning disability, and struggling with anomic aphasia ( knowing a word but being unable to say or recall it ).

Obviously I cannot speak for those who have more severe conditions, but even these were enough for teachers to call me retarded or imply as much to my parents as a child and a teen.

Somehow, I doubt that Dream has actually experienced that type of humiliation outside of being on the receiving end of Gamer Words. Because I can’t imagine ever trying to inflict that kind of hurt on someone else for a joke.

TLDR: Dream doesn’t know or care what he did, and his apology is pathetic and halfhearted at best.

I don’t, in any stretch of the imagination, dislike my new voice. I love the tenor quality of it. It sounds like me. It sounds like how I’ve wanted to sound for a long time. It’s perfect. I’m more comfortable speaking to others now, I can be confident and assertive in public, I don’t hide anymore.

But! I also used to be capable of singing first soprano (mostly) and it is profoundly strange to find that when I do that now, it comes out… falsetto. Notes that I used to sing every day now sound like someone else’s voice, tinny and unnatural. I don’t think singing them again is out of my reach, if I were to train my voice properly again. But I know they’ll never sound the same.

They’ll never sound like my voice was made to sing them again. They will sound stretched and pinched, and they will hurt my throat.

And there’s a sense of loss, there, because I didn’t gain much lower register either, and I lost soprano notes that aren’t even that high. My voice crackles like static and breaks like dry twigs and slides up to notes like a new fawn on ice. Mistakes I hadn’t made since my first year of highschool choir are now all I can hear when I try to sing.

And it wasn’t that I didn’t try to grow into this new voice! I worked cleaning alone at night and would sing to fill the quiet before YouTube started shoving ads in every ten seconds.

I don’t think you should do heroin or drink daily or smoke cigarettes or smoke crack because they can really impact your quality of life. I think they cause a lot of damage to your body.

I don’t think you’re a bad person if you use drugs anyways. I think you’re someone who didn’t know the risks and wanted to have fun, or someone desperate for relief, or someone who got tricked, or someone who grew up around it.

I think if you want out, I want to cheer you on. I think if you can’t quit, it’s not an inherent stain on your character.