Mmmmmmmm

FANDERS, WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T SIGN THIS PETITION.

No, not even as a joke. Don’t share it with your friends as a joke either, or make a meme out of it, or anything. I don’t know what the motivation was behind creating this petition – I guess it very well could have been a younger well-meaning Fander who genuinely doesn’t understand how elections work – but regardless of what the intentions were, this is so so so awful and could have so many terrible consequences if it starts gaining traction.

Listen, we all understood why Kanye’s “presidential bid” was harmful, right? This is basically the same thing: right now, every third-party vote is a vote for Tr*mp and, no offense to my American friends, but your country cannot afford to vote Tr*mp back in. The upcoming election needs to be taken seriously now more than ever. 

The fact that this petition is being directed at the Thomas Sanders fandom is extra unsavory. It’s common knowledge that a huge chunk of this fandom is made up of younger people, and as much as I love, cherish, and respect our younger population – heck, I’m a minor myself – the fact is that we’re much more easily influenced, eager to give people the benefit of the doubt, and unfortunately, way too many of us may not know any better.

“But Spec!” I hear you cry. “If this petition is mainly being spread by the younger side of the fandom that doesn’t know any better, what harm could it do? They can’t vote anyway!”

The thing is, if you follow multiple Sanders Sides blogs, you’ll know from all the times you’ve seen the same post on your dash ten times in a row that we spread stuff like wildfire. If enough people aren’t aware of the harmful consequences and start spreading this petition around, then regardless of whether they’re seriously asking for signatures or just spreading it as a joke, one viral post would be all it takes for the mainstream internet to take notice. I cannot stress enough how disastrous that would be. 

The second that this petition catches the attention of the wider public, the US will be at risk of having a repeat version of Kanye’s presidential bid: people with a vote, a terrible sense of humour and no understanding of the consequences may write in Thomas Sanders as a joke, thus effectively wasting a vote that could be used to take Tr*mp out of office.

Oh, and if for whatever reason you’re a Fander that “doesn’t care about politics”, then first of all check your privilege at the very least you could care about Thomas?? He is a real person that could suffer very real harm not only to his brand/reputation, but also his personal safety if this petition thing gets out of hand. A similar thing happened to the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series when a petition to change the US flag to the face of his fictional character began to gain traction. He was unaffiliated with the petition, but still received honest-to-goodness death threats. We cannot let this happen again.

Sorry if this post makes me sound angry, but it’s because I am. This is absolutely ridiculous. Please signal boost.

Ah yes, Book of Bill, top book of the romance section

Ranboo chat this stream really be like a bunch of children forced on a roadtrip with the neighbors

Excuse me, but,

Your local **what** now?

You guys know how to extract .zip files right

Here to shout about the turtles with friendship bracelets, and how they are the best part of drawing turtles actually!!!

Thinking VERY hard about Ángel @bwobgames and Zen mysmes

Even on roadtrips technoblade chat wants blood for the blood god

Can we get a McDonalds for the blood god?

Ranboo chat this stream really be like a bunch of children forced on a roadtrip with the neighbors

working dialogue lets fucking goooooo

I hope it is okay if I reblog to share my thoughts on this!!

As a neurodiverse person, I think it is incredibly important to have neurodiverse actors playing the neurodiverse characters!

I would absolutely love some genuine representation seen and seeing neurodiverse actors for younger neurodivergents who aspire to act or are big PJO fans to have people to look up to and see themselves in!!

Also not only do neurotypical actors playing neurodiverse characters tend to come off as over to the community as a mockery, but also neurodiverse actors are commonly overlooked and mistreated. From executives not making the set a safe place for them to work, to straight up bullying them and forcing them to suppress their neurological traits.

Not to mention that recently a big deal in the neurodiverse community(particularly for autistic folks) was Sia's movie "Music" where Sia not only hired an allistic actor to play a nonverbal autistic girl(who not only compared autistic people to inanimate objects, but also made a mockery of autistic body language and facial expressions throughout the whole movie), but Sia also claimed to have heavily researched autism and neurodiversity for three years before partnering with "Autisim Speaks" a well known autisim hate group. Sia ignored autistic and other neurodiverse voices, and straight up made a mockery of them for asking her to consider recasting and making accommodations to include autistic people. There was much more that went wrong with Sia. There are some things I fail to mention due to not wanting to go further and being physically and mentally exhausted just think about it, and some because it is genuinely triggering. While I know Rick wouldn't do that to us, Sia's movie had a rather large impact on the neurodiverse community and a lot of neurodiverse folks will be scared of this going in the same direction based on ot having the same issue that started the attention shift to Sia's movie and opened a lot more of the discussions on this topic of neurotypical playing neurodiverse folk.

Nonetheless all Sia wanted was to profit off an already struggling and stigmatized community like so many others have in the past, and frankly I am so tired of neurotypical people saying they care about the community just to show they are only here to feel good about themselves or for inspiration porn and profit.

There are many neurodiverse actors who would love to have the chance to have a job and take part in this movie. Not every character in PJO is neurodiverse(confirmed by frank zhang!), and so of course not every actor on the show has to be neurodiverse but those confirmed to be neurodiverse should be played by neurodiverse actors and those actors should be given a safe place to work and have their needs actually met.

I say, nothing about us without us.

do you think it’s important that the cast are neurodiverse/have adhd even if it means aging up the characters?

Thank you for this question. I will admit that I hadn’t thought about it before, and that’s a fault of my own. I am not part of the neurodiverse community and I don’t want to talk over those voices. Those members of the pjo fandom will have far more valuable insight and their thoughts and opinions should hold more weight on this topic than mine. 

That being said, I think it is important as representation is always important. It would be something great if they could try for it. Whether it is necessary in the casting decisions, I don’t believe I have the right to determine.  

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think since I’m not behind any of the decisions. They will cast who they cast. As far as aging up, based on what they have said so far, I don’t believe they will consider that.

Whether or not they cast actors who are neurodiverse/have ADHD for the demigods, it is important that they do the necessary research. Since Rick is working on the show and his son has ADHD and dyslexia—the son for whom he originally wrote the series—I trust that the show will not have a negative portrayal of the neurodiverse community. Then again, I ask pjo fans who are part of the community for their thoughts on this.

Watch as I write a whole essay on why the writting in "DOTA: Dragon's blood" is outstanding and designed perfectly to prey upon your emotions in the best way possible.

Not even about the characters or the plot itself, just how they give their viewers information!!

Especially in the invoker's backstory, it is in there for all of the story but they really popped off with that one part in particular!!!