White People: If You Want To Help Long Term: Get Used To Being Told Your Opinion Is Wrong, Irrelevant,

This is how I’m imagining Martin from now on and I don’t take criticism

Sex doesn’t make us whole.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL ASEXUALITY DAY!

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Free pic of my cat Casper

girl in a horror movie: vomits up black liquid or blood, screams at the top of her lungs and tries to hurt anyone that goes near her

me: it be like that sometimes

One of my biggest reasons for why low-empathy autistic Martin is my favorite is how much it demolishes the whole “empathy = morality” and “low empathy = bad, feels other people don’t matter” thing.  I have a lot of feelings so am gonna just dump ‘em all here in a disjointed manifesto.

Just look at it:  He has a reputation for caring and for doting on people, but relies on tangible, accessible ways to show it.  Bring them tea.  Tell them to sleep.  Listen to their problems.  It’s very learned, or self-taught rather, and makes so much sense in the context of how he grew up caring for his mother.  He flounders when those scripts are rejected:

Basira:  You can’t just stand next to someone with a cup of tea and hope everything’s gonna be all right.

Martin: That’s not fair.  You don’t even know me.  

Basira:  Prove it.

Martin:   Oh–h-hi!  Hey, hey Melanie, uh–  Can I get youuuu… a… cup… of… tea?

Even when the apocalypse happened, he was using those scripts.  Jon is in pain, Jon is despairing, time to make him a cup of tea!  Martin’s never been in a “tea will solve everything” denial, but it’s a reliable, tangible way he uses to offer comfort and make someone feel supported.  He doesn’t have a script for how to respond to “was just mentally tortured by our boss” or “blaming self for ending the world.”

We see him develop a new way to choose to care and be kind as their journey begins: treating the victims they meet as people, even if the victims can’t hear.  

Also building off of the “the masking is lower priority in the apocalypse” ideas!!  There’s a matter of who he’s around.  For most of season 5, it’s just Jon!  Jon who has so much faith in him, Jon who he knows loves and accepts him.  There’s less of a need to perform and fit in, and the same goes the other way around.  This is supported even more by how quickly Martin shifted back when Basira showed up: this is familiar territory again, defusing arguments and being group glue, and it quickly feels like we’re back to “the old Martin.”  

I also love this for how it plays out in him and Jon being in a relationship.  It’s very likely this is new territory for Martin!  He demonstrates his caring by pushing Jon to share his feelings, but rarely shares his own.  When he actually hears what those feelings are, they’re often hard for him to process, or he responds in ways that feel overly pragmatic or insensitive.  It doesn’t come naturally to him.

There’s a jab Peter keeps returning to during season 4 as he tries to groom Martin for the Lonely:  Be honest with yourself, Martin.  You don’t really care, Martin.  You never really cared, it’s all just habit.  It’s so on-the-nose targeted towards someone where caring for others is a choice, not based on empathetic feelings.  It’s so in line with how people talk about the idea of “low empathy.”  But Martin threw it right back in his face, and it couldn’t be more satisfying.

The best way to gauge how much a white person is actually working on their racism is to see how they treat a black person who makes them mad or uncomfortable or that they think isn’t being respectable. Even the most “anti racist” seeming white people will let that facade slip once they come across a black person they think isn’t respectable or that makes them mad.

When white people come across a black person that won’t coddle their feelings in the way society has taught white people to expect, that’s when their true colors come out. That’s how you learn the most about where a white person is at in the process of unlearning racism and checking themselves for unconscious bias.

tired: mermaids are all women

wired: much like elves, merfolk are mistaken by sailors for being all women because they have long hair and are very pretty

SMASH that mf reblog button if u love she/they nonbinary people!! Youre never gonna be Woman Lite, your gender and indentity are all you own!!! Kiss your local she/they square on the lips