and this is also why i think that any meaningful community building/advocacy/support around madness/neurodivergence/mental illness needs to be founded on principles of liberation and abolition, and that we need to be able to distinguish between people who are allies based on our shared values + goals, and between people who use some of the same language as us, but are fundamentally advocating for separate things.

One example I see a lot of is the idea of "lived experience" professionals, people who have a career in the mental health system and who also have some personal experience with mental illness. These professionals oftentimes will talk about their own negative experiences in the mental health system, and come into their careers with a genuine desire to improve the experience of patients. But their impact is incredibly limited by the system they have chosen to work in: the coercive elements of psychiatry incentivize professionals to buy into the existing power structures instead of disrupting them. And as a whole, many lived experience professionals end up getting exploited and tokenized by their employers and used as an attempt to make carceral psychiatry seem more palatable. Professionals in this dynamic are not working to effectively challenge the structural violence of their profession: they become complicit, even if they do also have good intentions and provide individual support.

(I do know some radical providers who have found innovative ways to fuck up the system and destabilize and shift power in their workplaces, but this is a very small number of providers and is not most of the lived experience providers I've talked with.)

Another example I see a lot in our spaces has to do with the evolution of the neurodiversity paradigm. I feel a very deep connection to the original conceptualization of neurodiversity and neurodivergent as coined by Kassiane Asasumasu, but in recent years I've seen a lot of people using neurodivergent language in a way that feels pretty dramatically different than the foundational principles. This isn't saying that people should stop using ND terminology or that all neurodivergent spaces are like this--rather, I just want to point out some trends I see in certain communities, both online and in my in personal life. Although people will often use neurodivergent language and on the surface, seem allied with concepts of deinstitutionalization, acceptance, etc, the values and structure in these community spaces often rely heavily on ideas of classification based in DSM, and build very prescriptive and rigid models for categorizing different types of neurodivergence in a way that ends up excluding some M/MI/ND people. Certain types of knowledge are valued over other types of knowledge, and certain diagnoses are prioritized as worthy of support over others. There's a lot of value placed on identifying and classifying many types of behaviors, beliefs, thoughts, actions, into specific categories, and a lack of solidarity between different diagnoses or the wider disability community.

Again, this isn't to say that ND terminology is bad or useless--I think it is an incredibly helpful explanatory model/shorthand for finding community and will call myself neurodivergent, and find a lot of value in community identification and sharing of wisdom. I just feel like it's important to realize that not every ND person, organization, or initiative, is actually invested in the project of fighting for our liberation.

when thinking about our activism, as abolitionists, it's important to be very specific about what our goals, values, and tactics are. For example, understanding the concept of non-reformist reforms helps us distinguish what immediate goals are useful, versus what reforms work to increase the carceral power of the psychiatric system. And when building our own value systems and trying to build alternative ways of caring for ourselves and our communities, we need to be able to evaluate what brings us closer to autonomy, freedom, and interdependence. I need people to understand that just because someone is also against psych hospitalization does not mean that they are also allies in the project of letting mad people live free, authentic, meaningful, and supported lives, and that oftentimes people's allyship is conditional on our willingness to conform to their ideas of a "good" mentally ill person.

Hehe I really enjoy your comantary and captions you're so funny, I can't wait until we see Wen Ning again since we left his brief cameo

I miss him everyday.

No one is doing unrequited love like my girl Hetty.

Which is with dignity for her own self worth and without making herself look like a fool.

She really said: I will not beg for a man’s affection and I deserve to be someone’s first choice.

me? watching dhmis for the 'nth time? its more likely than you think

rewatching a compilation of some of the bbc merlin cast commentaries being unhinged and

"you cannot make a show without lesbianism, in all fairness"

is a quote i need tattooed.

"Not saying that there isn't a high chance of me having illegitimate kids I don't know about, but that annoying rookie sure isn't related to me in any way."

GOD FORBID a woman points out that rhinedottir's apathy and overall cold and strict attitude is a very clear trauma response to all the insane dehumanization and shit in general she went through during the cataclysm. god forbid a woman points out that we have very good evidence that she is not just the 'evil evil woman' that she is portrayed to be :/

THE BEST OF PRIORITY: TUCHANKA (PART 1)

Featuring: Cmdr. Sophie Shepard, Urdnot Wrex, and Urdnot Bakara With: Dr. Mordin Solus, Primarch Adrien Victus, Dalatrass Linron, Urdnot Wreav, and Comm. Specialist Samantha Traynor This will be the defining moment of Krogan history... Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition (2021)

listen i know a majority of my dash is anti-jimmy, but y'all gotta admit. that man is convincing on the mic fr.

Your daily reminder that we were robbed of the Four Storms - Cassandra, Maris, Ellyn, & Floris Baratheon - and witnessing their dynamic by how they interacted with Aemond and Lucerys.

You hear me, ROBBED.

Mark Lewisohn is out here getting paid to analyze photos of John and Paul, meanwhile on Tumblr.com we’re here doing it all the time for free.

part of me thinks the whole your-shoes-are-so-fucking-white thing was shiv angry about the matsson sending his ex blood while she got effectively nothing from tom— “why didn’t you fight as hard for me” in the sense that even violence can be love if the intention is there, right? isn’t that what logan taught her—that a man’s sincerest love is violent? “half a litre of your own blood is what it looks like when a man truly loves you”. you backed a dead horse without so much as checking it’s pulse. you won’t bleed for me.

After suffering through another day of potterball

going insane thinking about how soft and warm cyrillo will be with his loved ones but absolutely ruthless and unforgiving with the people who hurt them : ) he'll literally wipe your tears away and comfort you and then go shed some blood just minutes later and i'm just saying... sure is a good thing he's part of the protagonists bc he could so easily be an antagonist if i spun his story differently :' ))

teleparty added gifs and just in time because how else was i supposed to communicate my anguish other than a cat crying and screaming?

BBC Merlin + live commentary by @gabbaghouls​ @witchboykit​ and I from our Merlin watch party

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