Squirrel Ponderings

A squirrel and their interests. Random things, random fun, Random!

[battle-for-dyke-island]

dear fellow autistic people: if you consistently come out of doctor’s appointments feeling emotionally (and sometimes physically) hurt, but you feel bad for feeling hurt because “the doctors were being nice”, the doctors were not being nice.

this is something I had to learn the hard way. doctors often dress up their words all pretty so you can’t sue them. I, for a long time, mistook this as genuine kindness. It’s not. It’s just being professional. even if they didn’t call you a slur or anything that doesn’t mean they weren’t ignoring your needs.

trust what your body and emotions tell you. if you are feeling hurt, there is a reason, and you need to listen to it. please listen to it.

[heartattackinblackdye]

this summer i recommend shower wipes or body wipes to people who struggle with hygiene due to disability, mental or physical. yes i know it produces unnecessary waste. yes there’s the argument of “if you buy the wipes then you’ll never shower,” but chances are most people who are struggling would Not Have Showered with or without access to wipes. i know it isnt a full shower but wiping yourself down can make a big difference in how you feel!!

along these lines you can think about buying mouthwash and getting any kind of friction at all on your teeth when it’s too hard to brush fully, dry shampoo if it’ll help keep your hair less oily when washing your hair is overwhelming, etc. you deserve easier ways to care for yourself and feel clean. also remember you are not a failure for struggling with hygiene even if society tells you otherwise!

[heartattackinblackdye]

this summer i recommend shower wipes or body wipes to people who struggle with hygiene due to disability, mental or physical. yes i know it produces unnecessary waste. yes there’s the argument of “if you buy the wipes then you’ll never shower,” but chances are most people who are struggling would Not Have Showered with or without access to wipes. i know it isnt a full shower but wiping yourself down can make a big difference in how you feel!!

along these lines you can think about buying mouthwash and getting any kind of friction at all on your teeth when it’s too hard to brush fully, dry shampoo if it’ll help keep your hair less oily when washing your hair is overwhelming, etc. you deserve easier ways to care for yourself and feel clean. also remember you are not a failure for struggling with hygiene even if society tells you otherwise!

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

"If it really was that bad, someone would already have diagnosed it-" Have you guys never heard of systemic ableism?? The concept of medical neglect is a stranger to you??

[puppygirllaika]

if i had near infinite money to make a blockbuster action movie i would simply make a film about a bunch of postapocalyptic lesbian mechanics defending their commune from paramilitary christian survivalists by turning a bunch of old construction equipment into mechs and there would be a scene where one of them picks up an armored pickup truck with a CAT that has two backhoes for arms and then throws it into the helicopter hovering over the battlefield causing them both to come crashing down in a big fiery explosion behind her causing every other girl on the battlefield to fall in love with her instantly and then a bunch of the dead christian soldiers wives would come live at the commune instead and become adopted lesbian sisters and there would also be a montage of sweaty lesbians in cargo pants and tank tops building the mechs in an old barn and having sloppy sweaty sex in the hay loft and using the hay crane like an engine lift. marvel eat your heart out.

[mush7221]

Table Top Transition

[innerchildabortionclinic]

there is something very sad and humiliating about having to desperately beg doctors and family members to understand that involuntary institutionalization does not in fact help your mental health, knowing your perspective will always be dismissed at the end of the day

it's such an awful existence to be a psychiatric patient as a teenager, there has to be another way to help aggressively suicidal teenagers, such as addressing the circumstances that make them want to die so much in the first place! you can stop suicide by locking someone up, sure, but they will not want to live

[doe-eyed-disaster]

it's awful that researchers are only now starting to take this perspective seriously, but there is a small but growing body of study supporting exactly what patients have been saying about psychiatric incarceration. one study in particular, from Allegheny county in Pennsylvania, offers a damning analysis of involuntary psychiatric commitments:

For individuals whose cases are judgment calls, where some physicians would hospitalize but others would not, we find that hospitalization nearly doubles both the probability of dying by suicide or overdose and also nearly doubles the probability of being charged with a violent crime in the three months after evaluation. We provide evidence of earnings and housing disruptions as potential mechanisms. Our results suggest that, on the margin, the system we study is not achieving the intended effects of the policy.

[decompose1]

i dislike the weird jump to blame suicide victims for their suicides and call them selfish. suicide is very frequently in some way a social murder. i think instead of blaming someone who was in such a dark place that they saw no other way out we should maybe be blaming the people who threw gas on the fire, such as those with a lot of power to make that person's life that bad or those who abused them into it. is that really that unreasonable

[decompose1]

not once has being told i was being selfish- or seeing people talk about how selfish suicide is- EVER made me feel less suicidal. it creates shame. it makes me shut down and never want to disclose feeling this way because oh, g-d, doesn't that make me a bad person? oh, g-d, they'll think i'm a monster, they'll think i'm guilt tripping them, they'll think, they'll think, they'll think (....)

and worse still, nearly every time i've been pushed this far- and, indeed, a lot of my mental health problems to begin with- often stem from the idea that i am less important than anyone else. my thoughts, my feelings, my safety, my life are less important. so to hear people essentially say to me, "but how would everyone else feel!?"?? it doesn't help at all. it makes it so much worse. once more, i am not the important one. even at my lowest, i have to be the one to make compromises and consider how everyone else feels. how could that ever help me? how could you say that to someone?

[decompose1]

i dislike the weird jump to blame suicide victims for their suicides and call them selfish. suicide is very frequently in some way a social murder. i think instead of blaming someone who was in such a dark place that they saw no other way out we should maybe be blaming the people who threw gas on the fire, such as those with a lot of power to make that person's life that bad or those who abused them into it. is that really that unreasonable

[decompose1]

not once has being told i was being selfish- or seeing people talk about how selfish suicide is- EVER made me feel less suicidal. it creates shame. it makes me shut down and never want to disclose feeling this way because oh, g-d, doesn't that make me a bad person? oh, g-d, they'll think i'm a monster, they'll think i'm guilt tripping them, they'll think, they'll think, they'll think (....)

and worse still, nearly every time i've been pushed this far- and, indeed, a lot of my mental health problems to begin with- often stem from the idea that i am less important than anyone else. my thoughts, my feelings, my safety, my life are less important. so to hear people essentially say to me, "but how would everyone else feel!?"?? it doesn't help at all. it makes it so much worse. once more, i am not the important one. even at my lowest, i have to be the one to make compromises and consider how everyone else feels. how could that ever help me? how could you say that to someone?

[flowercrowncrip]

“Inclusive community arts festival!” “Everybody welcome!” “Events for all!”

No access info for any of the venues

Box office is inaccessible

Google “[festival name] accessibility”; get info on their “accessible pricing” (pay £1 less if you want to). No mention of free tickets for essential carers

Do a lot of disability detective work; most venues don’t have wheelchair access

One claims to be accessible, look inside: “we’re an accessible venue. There are three steps to get in, but we can help you with those”.

“Everybody welcome*”

*excludes wheelchair users, you can get fucked

[asexual-amanita]

Yes, some disabilities are dynamic, and most of us in the disability community know this. However many people aren’t aware of just how dynamic some conditions can be.

A person can go from no symptoms at all to being profoundly debilitated all in one day.

Some have baseline symptoms so low and flares so high, that things can go from 1 to 10 very quickly.

I know it can seem impossible that some people’s disabilities fluctuate with such extreme variability, but this is a real phenomenon that people deal with.

[support-for-the-suicidal]

When we talk about the autonomy of suicide, it's almost always discussed from the side of the right to die — which is definitely important and does need to be accepted by more of society. But there's also the side of the right to live. Until society stops punishing people for their existence and depriving them of what they need, the autonomy of suicide for everyone cannot be reached. Because when people are killing themselves because of changeable, societal structures, that is not a completely autonomous decision. It is one that has been forced upon them.

Suicidal people will always exist and people who will always be suicidal exist and that is not inherently an issue that needs to be solved. But it becomes an issue when people are forced into it. Currently, suicide prevention involves institutionalizing suicidal people, telling them that they must survive, by any means possible, but so many of them have been told the opposite for their entire lives, implicitly or otherwise. Suicide prevention should involve working to improve society, making it a livable and survivable place for all people. Only then will the autonomy of suicide be achieved. Otherwise, so much of it is social murder.

In short, "Don't kill yourself 🥺" isn't enough — solving the why behind it is.

[arcwarlock]

I keep thinking about that "Final Fantasy is a Homestuck" post because I hate how true it is. Trying to describe this game makes me sound about how trying to describe Homestuck made me sound.

Yes please play this 12 year-old game. Sorry you can't play the first part of it because it was so bad they rebooted the whole thing and dropped a dragon nuke on the planet and caused planetary ecological changes. They will still reference that, sorry. Yes the entire base story is considered okish, please play for a 60 hours to get to the first expansion. It is actually worth it trust me I know it sounds wild, but it will rip your heart out several times. Some of the best writing in the entire game is in an optional job quest storyline where you pick up a greatsword and get asked by your own internal pain why you don't just go mad.

There are bunnies on the moon, the dragons are aliens, you optionally travel through time and space to catch a fish, you have a cook-off and alpaca catching competition to determine a nation's ruler, the guy who basically invented advanced gun technology keeps stealing old advanced weaponry to tinker with and no one is stopping him for some reason, Estinien is there (it makes sense in context), the catholic elves are so messed there are LEVELS to that shit (everyone should do the Scholasticate quests! :D), one of your foes won't fucking stay dead and goes to extreme lengths just to have a punching match with you, depression is a bird, one old tired man just wants a nap but also funded an entire theater company, if you do an option storyline of fights you can find a sentient plush chocobo and his world-ending superweapon bug pal just in the world map, you have an entire WWE cagematch fight series, gundam references!, there's Evangelion crossover!(soon), there's Nier crossover!, the gods of the world form Voltron, a man shackles himself to an ancient database tower to pull you to another world.

I sound like a crazy person but that's not even all of it! It's a major time sink I really don't blame people for not playing it. But if you've at all considered it give it a go, there's a free trial that keeps getting expanded so you can play 5/6 of the 10 year story that just wrapped up for free. You've probably seen the meme.

Give it a shot. This game actually literally saved my life.

And at the end they'll ask was your journey worthwhile? And henceforth you shall walk.

[jocie-questions-reality]

Is it concerning that whenever I see something advertised or directed to trans woman like me i automatically assume it’s dangerous; probably trying to get my name on a list, or hurt me, or kill me, or all 3.

I can’t trust the world I live in

[melodies-stereo]

the main programmer at Team Cherry (the Silksong and Hollow Knight people) transitioned!!! all good things are made by trans women!

[missstrogen]

YIPEEEEEEEEEEE

[boringkate]

You can tell a girl is really cool and tough and badass if she's hugging a stuffed animal. Only the most really badass babes hug stuffed animals.

[deepetch]

This is awesome on so many levels.

Ladies and Gentlemen i present to you John Carpenter’s The Thing, as performed by the claymated, Antarctic cast of the hit children’s animation Pingu. Directed by Lee Hardcastle, in under 3 minutes. Noot, Noot.

[junkyardddog]

Oh my fucking god.

[novella-november]

This is an absolutely amazing demonstration of skill and artistry with claymation, absolutely stunning, and absolutely as bloody, gorey, body-horror filled as the original film!

(aka, please do not click play if you cannot handle very graphic body horror and blood.)

If you can handle viewing the original 1970s “The Thing”, you should be able to handle this, and will be in for a treat!