[ id: a set of four digital, stylized paintings, the first three with white backgrounds and the last one with a black background. Individual descriptions below:
1) A thin person with dark skin and black, coily hair wearing a yellow top stands in front of the aromantic flag with closed eyes, a green heart on their chest. Text around them reads: Black aros matter. ("Aros" is in green, the rest is in black)
The aromantic flag has five horizontal stripes, in green, light green, white, gray and black.
2) A thin person with medium-dark skin, no hair, a beard and brown eyes wearing a purple flannel shirt stands in front of the asexual flag smiling, with a dark purple heart on their chest. Text around them reads: Black aces matter. ("Aces" is in purple, the rest is in black)
The asexual flag has four horizontal stripes, in black, gray, white and purple.
3) A thin person with dark skin, long, colorful locs and brown eyes wearing glasses, a yellow hat, a green shirt, and black suspenders, smiling in front of a rainbow infinity symbol. Text around them reads: Black neurodiversity matters. ("Neurodiversity" is in rainbow colors, the rest is in black)
4) A black fist stands in front of a green and turquoise splash of paint, with text around it reading: All black lives matter. ("All" is underlined and hot pink, the rest is in white)
I mean, it's far from topping his list of sins, but I am continually blown away by just how fucking trashy Donald Trump and every single one of his supporters are.
My head-canon is that the stage will collapse (due to unqualified crony contractors being used), and take out half the cabinet and half of the brocasting world all at once.
It's June, motherfuckers, and you know what that means! Apart from firing a few rent-lowering shots to filter out the chuds from my following, it's probably also a good time to post a reminder that there are many strange ways to be queer, and this is one of them.
video transcript below the cut, may be slightly inaccurate, I tend to ad-lib when reading my scripts into voiceover
It's Pride Month, so if you'll forgive me I'm taking a two minute break from the One Piece, League of Legends, Marvel Rivals, Final Fantasy and Pokémon shorts to tell you… Sylveon is trans, Taliyah is trans, everyone on the Straw Hats is queer, there are no words to describe how queer superheroes are as a concept let alone how queer they all are individually, and here's a fun fact for you: Cloud Strife's story gets ten times better when you understand it as an allegory for a trans coming out experience.
As for me, well, I'm not trans, but I do occupy my own little space in the rainbow flags which looks like this. I am aromantic.
We are generally not as visible as many of our queer siblings, probably at least partly because it's kind of a difficult identity to even discover in yourself, you basically have to prove a negative.
But what is this thing, "aromantic"? Well… okay, let's say you're a straight guy, right. You know the way you feel romantically about other men? I feel exactly the same way, and then I also feel that way about women, and then also the same way about all of the other genders.
Now, aromantic often goes along with asexual, there's a lot of co-occurrence of the two, but not always, and that is my situation. Yes to sex, no to romance, which being a man, yes, I know, that just makes me the same as 90% of the men you match on Hinge. "Ha ha ha didn't realize "fuccboi" was an orientation now," I know. I get it. I understand. I have had all the same thoughts myself, especially when I was questioning.
Which is the difficulty with being aromantic, because in order to figure out that that's what you are, you have to prove a negative. I have never been in love, and I have no reason to think I ever will be… but what if someday I meet The One??? What if there's a special divinely designated perfect soulmate out there, just waiting for me, and one day our eyes will meet across the room and it will be love at first sight forever?
And like. I can't prove that won't happen, anymore than I can prove that there isn't a flowery pink teapot currently hiding somewhere in the orbit of Saturn. And frankly, if it did happen, I wouldn't be mad. Why would I be? I would have a soulmate! That's a pretty big W, I think.
But… I've had over thirty years to encounter someone—anyone—who can spark my romantic interest, and thus far, every challenger of every gender has failed. So either I am aromantic, or else you people have a skill issue.
Anyway, like anything to do with queerness, aromantic is a sprawling and diverse spectrum. You got your aroaces, aroallos, aroflux, arospikes, demiromantics, frayromantics, grayromantics, cupioromantics, there's a whole world of different experiences present under this umbrella. For me, though, just "aromantic" is fine. That's the broad label, that's the one I fall under, that's the identity I take pride in. Happy June!
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Executive functioning skills range from working memory to cognitive flexibility to inhibitory control, and beyond. They power our daily func
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Practical Strategies for Enhancing Executive Functioning Difficulties in Adults With Autism - Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.
