#limebug's rantings

[local-limebug]

getting emotional about dream of the endless again today. but this time it's daniel, not morpheus.

like, aside from just the trauma of being a little kid that gets the memories and power and legacy of an aeons old being. he's still dream.

you know that panel, where matthew says to daniel, "i was his friend. i'm not your anything." that is so horrifying to me.

morpheus was lonely. he was so lonely even though he had death and delirium and matthew and lucienne and every damn dream in his realm. and then he died, and a new soul became dream of the endless.

and now he has a new soul. a child's soul, that's so scared and so lonely again. and daniel didn't want to be lonely. he called matthew his friend. and matthew rejected him. and it was probably the same with lucienne and his siblings and hob.

morpheus!dream was terrified of reaching out when he had people that loved him. and now that daniel!dream is reaching out, everyone is treating him like a stranger. but he's still dream.

i understand that daniel is a new soul. a part of dream that everyone thought would never change over millions of years has changed, and it's terrifying. he's acting like a whole new person.

but how much of a person is really their soul? a human has the same soul their entire life. would a 5 year old and his own 80 year old self act or think like the same person?

daniel has morpheus' memories. daniel is morpheus. he is dream of the endless. he could take on morpheus' appearance if he wanted to. do his memories, that he remembers as his own experiences, that are his experiences, count for nothing?

and all the people he loves, he is meeting again for the first time. and there is no guarantee that they will still love him, even though now exists the potential for dream of the endless to start loving openly again.

it's just so horrifying and so heartbreaking to me. morpheus was so tired when he passed on. and now he is so scared and none of his friends will help him.

EDIT: and not to mention that daniel can't go back to anyone he knew as a human either. they all see him as dream of the endless, and all of morpheus' friends see him as daniel.

he has changed irreversibly because of something completely out of his control and he is so so lonely for it. and naturally as a person with no problems, i am being so normal about it.

[local-limebug]

in continuation with my post on adhd not being taken seriously in many online neurodivergent communities:

(stealing @pandostims tags to rant a bit more)

THIS. i understand that adhd and autism can look similar sometimes and are very common comorbidities but they are, at the end of the day, two different disorders. adhd is NOT autism lite!!

that narrative of adhd and autism falling under the exact same category of "neurodivergence" is ridiculous because a) it makes people forget that neurodivergency is a LOT more than just adhd and autism and b) it is such a fucking disservice to people with adhd to make it seem like "autism but more social :)" or "autism but better functioning"

because, first of all, so many people with adhd have pretty bad social anxiety because of it, including me. we're also pretty bad at social stuff, it's been researched. adhd is not the "good at social stuff but also has hyperfixations" disorder. and secondly, do you know how fucking invalidating it is to have adhd just be treated like "autism but less bad"??

like any disorder being called the "better version of [insert another disorder]" is bullshit. it's still a disorder and still making people's lives hell, and this bullshit narrative of adhd being autism lite makes it seem like even the worst case of adhd is a better situation to be in than having mild autism, because "oh it's the better version of autism" and "if you were worse, you'd be autistic and not just have adhd"

it is just so deeply invalidating to have your life be ruined by a disorder and then have the people who claim to "understand neurodivergency" say that it's not being done by that disorder, because it can only get that bad if it was a different disorder.

you all hate the term "asperger's" for being the actual "autism lite", and rightfully so, it's a bullshit term. but that's how some of you treat adhd in relation to autism, for some fucking reason. like "oh, if you have these symptoms but do well in society? you have adhd :) and if you do bad in society, you're autistic :)"

if you're not a psychologist, and/or don't have both disorders, and you say some shit like that, i'm sorry, but kindly shut the hell up.

[local-limebug]

everyday i wake up and get mad about people not accepting neopronouns.

"they're making the community look bad" queerphobes do not care how palatable you are.

"their pronouns are made up" all pronouns are made up. gender is made up. i thought we'd established that.

"they're attention seekers" yeah everyone is. that's sort of a part of the human experience.

[local-limebug]

Blog Navigation

Hello, and welcome to my silly little blog <3

i'm gonna start reading One Piece soon, i made a blog for my thoughts on that as i go along, since i like yapping abt media but i wanna avoid spoilers so i won't be interacting with the fandom until i've caught up. catch that on @livebloggingonepiece

I have 4 tags currently that I use to sort my blog, and although they show up when you click the search button on my blog, I don't trust Tumblr's search function to work because it's already malfunctioned on me.

[ #i love artists ] is for all the art I reblog, including original art and fanart, because I like to revisit and look at the art.

[ #limebug's rantings ] is for when I write something long that I want to talk about seriously, something that's emotionally important to me.

[ #limebug.txt ] is for general original posts.

[ #limebug's original posts ] is for fandom ramblings.

You can navigate my blog by clicking these tags in the tags section of this post or via the search bar.

[ #dbda desi attire ] is for my series where I make messy moodboards for the Dead Boy Detectives characters as desi outfits.

[local-limebug]

A Discussion on Christianity and Islam, and How Critiquing Said Religions is Perceived in the Western World: by a Queer Person Raised in a Muslim Country

DISCLAIMER: I do not mean to offend the followers of any religion. I myself am religious, albeit neither Muslim nor Christian, and understand the importance of religion. I do not mean to insult anyone.

So with this whole fiasco of "Anonymous Sudan" taking down AO3, I think people know by now that it was a ploy to get people to be islamophobic by making the world think they hate the LGBTQ+ community. And it got me thinking about my own experiences as a queer person oppressed under Islam.

Now, obviously, if you are a Muslim or Christian reading this, I want to say right here that if you are accepting of queer people, then this post is not about you.

I just want to discuss how often I see ex-Christians critiquing Christianity for how it is used as a tool to oppress marginalized communities, and how this discussion is normalized/destigmatized in Western circles. Critique of Christianity is unproblematic in the East too, as it's a critique of a foreign religion, so no one really cares.

However, as someone who has been oppressed under Islam, who has been told that I am going to hell for being queer and that the Qur'an forbids my existence, I feel very isolated that there is no platform to talk about my experience without being accused of islamophobia.

I'm not islamophobic. My two closest friends are devout Muslims. I got lucky enough to see the beauty of Islam through them, but that doesn't change the fact that I still was traumatized by the religion.

In Muslim countries such as mine, I could be imprisoned for making this post. People have been killed for less here. But I need to talk about how in any society where religion is considered to be the most important thing there is, people will be oppressed by that religion.

Christians did it in the West (and most of the world, thanks to colonization), but Muslims are doing this in many Eastern countries. And I hate that unlike ex-Christians, I cannot be angry at the God and His people that traumatized me without being accused of islamophobia.

I'm not going to pretend that I love Islam in its entirety. It has beautiful facets, but of course I harbour resentment towards the religion. Of course I am angry. I deserve to exist and I hate that this religion was forced on me the way that it was whilst I was growing up.

Again, I mean no hate to any Muslims. Many are actually amazing people. But many are not. I was suffocated by Islam growing up, and I have no space to talk about it on any platform, which is just further intensifying my resentment.

In conclusion, this whole disjointed rant was just a way for me to say that there needs to be a space for ex-Muslims to safely talk about their negative experiences with the religion. Americans call Evangelicals a cult, and it is in quite a similar vein that Muslims in certain countries are. Muslims in the East are intolerant of any discussion against Islam and Westerners accuse you of islamophobia the minute you start talking (or else they're right-wingers who want you to call Muslim people terrorists).

If any Muslim people want to contribute to the conversation, my DMs are open, my askbox is open, reply to this post, reblog, put in the tags, whatever. If you want to discuss this, please do. I would genuinely love to hear what you have to say.

[local-limebug]

FUN FACT ABOUT ME: i knew i wanted to be childfree since before i even knew it was an option.

i grew up in pakistan. and i was assigned female at birth. so i just kind of grew up assuming that i would have to get married to a man and have children. i don't know why, because my parents are very liberal by pakistani standards, and they never forced this on me, but i just kind of knew it was expected of me by society on some level.

i did not know that that was an option for me. to not get married. i, for some reason, thought the fight with my parents about it would be inevitable. i remember being like 8 years old and telling them about it and being so surprised that they agreed with my decision.

and i remember being in kindergarten or like grade 1 or 2. and i remember sitting down and coming up with plans to run away from my own wedding as an adult or to threaten my future husband into abandoning the marriage or ways to induce miscarriages in myself. i grew up despising the idea of marriage because marriage meant children, and i despised the idea of children.

and i don't know why, but it is, on some level, so funny to me that i was fully ready to commit crimes and run away from my loving family at the ripe old age of 6 years old because of how much i did not fucking want a baby.

i am actually so proud of that pissed off little pakistani child that was ready to commit actual felonies to avoid having to raise a baby.

[local-limebug]

still wild to me that some people will straight up have a whole "fem dni" or "masc/men dni" or "cis dni" like ok. where do i, the genderfluid bitch go?

cause i fall under the trans umbrella, but there are times when i do identify with my agab. i'm genderfluid but my gender changes like every few days so i usually just id as multigender and like ??? "men dni" ok but i'm a woman too. "fem dni" ok but i'm a man too !!!

like can you people be normal about multigendered people for one fucking day

[local-limebug]

I just finished watching Barbie and... wow. That was one of the most beautiful films I've seen in such a long time. I know it'll be undermined because it's Barbie and therefore not taken seriously, but I saw so much of myself in both Ken and Barbie, and so I'm going to rant about it.

The reversal of patriarchy in Barbie Land led to such a unique portrayal of gender inequality, where I truly sympathized with the Kens. They established a historical matriarchy in Barbie Land and switched gender roles in a way that even the most oblivious man would understand how ridiculous sexism of all forms is. The movie portrays beautifully how both men and women suffer under patriarchy in the real world.

I also loved the way that women of all ages were included. It wasn't just about little girls' dreams. It was about those little girls growing up and continuing to dream and changing the world. Sasha's mom being the one to dream up an imperfect Barbie, before accompanying her back to Barbie Land i.e. back to her childhood to fix it all, taking her daughter with her... it's about the intergenerational trauma, and breaking the cycle. Seeing their portrayal of Ruth Handler, a woman who made Barbie inspired by her own daughter, getting to talk to the idea that outlived her was so moving.

And the way that Barbie and Ken's individual arcs mirror that experience of children growing up... Barbie realizing she's not perfect and having a mental breakdown over it before accepting it and learning to love her imperfections. Ken, trying so hard to be perfect but always falling short, eventually turning to hostility as a way to regain control over his narrative, before realizing that he doesn't have to be perfect, he doesn't have to define himself how other people see him, he doesn't have to be Barbie's Ken. He can just be Ken.

Greta Gerwig and the writers of Barbie are geniuses for managing to pull this off so beautifully, and I need to go cry again about this movie and how perfect it was. My inner child felt so seen.