I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s considered comparing this stuff to gaslighting. (There are content warnings at the top of the linked page, fyi.)

—————

The similarities being things like:

Thinking that other people’s feelings are extremely important, and carefully protecting them, while believing your own feelings aren’t important at all

Assuming that when people contradict you, they are right and you’re wrong

Doing what other people tell you you should do, and accepting what other people tell you is normal, even if it harms you

—————

I’ll probably write more about this later.

I’ve been thinking about cartoons I watched when I was younger

(this could have been longer but I’m tired.)

You know the style of comedy where the characters are sort of aggressively stupid? The punchlines, the parts where you laugh, may be slapstick-like, but instead of the characters being well-meaning people who may just be unlucky, they’re deliberately doing things that are harmful or make no sense.

I went to TVTropes looking for a word for this, and there are a bunch of sorta-duplicates: “the ditz,” “lethally stupid,” and others, but none of them exactly describe what I’m thinking about.

I really hated most of the shows that had this. The only one I ever willingly watched was The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and now I’m asking myself why I liked it. Billy is pretty much everything I dislike in an obnoxious cartoon character. Was I just that excited about Mandy? Did it have more plot than other shows? I don’t know.

 

A thing about language

In my internal monologue, unless I have a reason to think carefully about them, I don’t really use names. There’s just sort of a [insert name here] in my mind, with an idea of the person I’m thinking about. The next thing to come, as I try to call to mind the actual name, is a vague sense of what it sounds like– what letter it starts with, how many syllables.

This means that if I’m put on the spot, I’m likely to say a vaguely similar name, instead of the one I actually mean. Or not just say out loud, but type, or think I’ve heard before, or see and think I recognize it. And I usually don’t realize until a few seconds afterward.

For Sparkly, I have to sort through two different online nicknames and eir real name when I refer to em. I’ve never actually called em by one of eir screen names out loud, which is good.

Things Minty read like two weeks ago

I’ve always liked/admired/identified with/wished I could be like the kind of characters who talk a mile a minute and quote random things and are something adjacent to witty, but in a way that people around them don’t understand or appreciate.

Examples that hopefully explain this better than that sentence did:

  • Dlique and Zeiat from the Imperial Radch books, who reminded me of this fact and prompted this post
  • Willy Wonka in the old movie with Gene Wilder (I haven’t seen the newer one)
  • Some incarnations of the Doctor (especially Ten)

Re: imagining a world without oppression

Someone I follow on Tumblr once wrote a big long essay about the ridiculous awfulness of something they heard people in an activist group say:

“I don’t know what the point of our community is if we’re not fighting oppression. In the future, when we don’t have to fight like this, I can’t imagine what we’ll do instead.”

(Or something like that.)

And on the one hand, I understand how someone would feel like that. But it’s still awful.

I can understand it because finding people who have the same anxieties and traumas that I have, people who I can connect to and understand on that topic, has been incredibly comforting and validating for me. It is kind of weird and sad to imagine that community going away, people not being as drawn to it or caring as much about it.

But 1, if people feel less drawn to tiny little autistic communities because the rest of the world is now more welcoming for them, and most importantly because they aren’t traumatized, it’s ok to feel nostalgic for that little tight-knit community but that’s not a bad thing to have happen!

And 2, we do have positive things, as a community. We have things that are unique to us and things that bring us together, besides trauma. And the truth is I feel just as strongly about those things, I feel just as attached to them, I need them just as much. I need things like “infodump to me and then I’ll infodump to you,” I need fiction about autistic characters by autistic people, I need stim toy recommendations, I need pithy AAC prose, I need “femme NOS”. All these things remind me that we are OK, that I am not everything my self-hatred tells me I am, that we can live and be happy as we are. Those things are just as vibrant and awesome as the stories about trauma and abuse and self-hatred.

Sparkly is going to what I’m going to call a fancy-dress party tomorrow night. I’m calling it that because that’s an old term for a costume party, and this event involves costumes, is vaguely historical (Sparkly’s dress is, anyway) and is also fancy in the sense of formal. Numbers Guy made himself a frock coat– in only a few days, no less– and a period-appropriate colorful vest to go under it. They’re going to be quite impressive, I think.

I spent the evening making adjustments to Sparkly’s dress (just moving some hooks and eyes around.) Tomorrow ey gets to iron it. Or at least, I’m hoping I can convince em to do the ironing, if I cook dinner.

Oh no what about eir hair. I haven’t even thought about that yet. Something with lots of curls, I guess.